


Where my demons hide

by Jinxgirl



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4208004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jinxgirl/pseuds/Jinxgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the face of a breakdown of everything and everyone in their world, Santana and Quinn have only each other to rely on. Zombie apocalypse rp. Canon through season four. Will be rather lengthy, eventual Quinntana. Character deaths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was now the Thanksgiving holidays, her second year post graduation, and Santana Lopez still had no idea what she wanted to do with her life.  
The problem was, the dreams she had had, over the course of her life, had been greatly varied depending upon her mood at the time. As a teenager, she had thought she wanted to go to school and get her education. Then she had thought that she simply wanted to be famous, with no thoughts of how this would happen. Now she was considering dancing, but how, exactly, especially just taking an adult class a few times a week where most of the people in there were old and out of shape? She had considered being a publicist, being an actress, modeling, and still none of it seemed right, or even really possible. The truth was that Santana not only was unsure of her dream, she was afraid she didn’t have what it takes to follow through with it.  
Not that she would ever voice this. Any time Kurt or Rachel tried to be “helpful” and prod her towards furthering herself, she would snap and put them off and insist that she knew exactly what she was doing and where she was going. But it was clear as time went by and she continued to stall that this wasn’t the case. And now here she was, back in Lima with her mother, well-meaning and supportive as she was, asking her exactly what it was she was doing with all the money that she had given her for graduation, and what answer did she have to give her? Shopping? Paying for necessities for the moment and not for her future?  
Santana hated to come home now, not because she didn’t like to see her mother and her father, when he was actually around for a minute or two for that to be possible, but because it reminded her of everything she had lost and how little she had gained. Each holiday it was only her and her mother, as her father, a wealthy plastic surgeon, rarely bothered to join them, just as he had throughout her childhood. Her abuela still refused to acknowledge her, and it seemed to her that most of the Glee kids had moved on to bigger and better, as she herself had yet to fully accomplish. It was depressing, and already, not even at New Year’s, she was counting the days that she would return to the city.  
She knew that Brittany was home for the holidays too, and yet Santana had resisted seeing her up until this point. She wanted Brittany to come to her, to be the one to choose to reach out, to choose her, and she did not want to be hurt if Brittany did not make that choice. And yet how many times had her fingers itched to reach for the phone, how many times had she found herself getting in her car, key in ignition, then abruptly changing directions to get a latte instead of getting her girl?  
But it was Thanksgiving. It was Thanksgiving, and every Thanksgiving previously, for the past five years, Santana had always gone to Brittany’s house, or Brittany had gone to hers, after their family meals. When they were younger they had snuggled up together under a blanket on the couch, watching the Macy parade on repeat with Brittany’s little sister playing on the floor in front of them or with the smell of Santana’s abuela’s cooking lingering in the background. It was Thanksgiving, and throughout the entire morning and most of the quiet, rather sad meal minus her father, who was working at the hospital, and her abuela, who presumably was eating with church members rather than the granddaughter she had designated a sinner, Santana had felt increasingly anxious and depressed, almost dreading the meal’s end, when she and her mother would be alone together.

It wasn’t that she minded being with her mother. Santana had always loved her, but since coming out to her, they had grown closer in a way she hadn’t quite anticipated, and she missed her more fiercely than she would have guessed, living apart from her. But she knew that her mother was always sad and disappointed, on the holidays that her husband couldn’t be with her, and Santana herself wasn’t at all in a mindset to help cheer her up. She had poked and prodded at the meal that didn’t taste quite as good as her abuela’s cooking would have, until finally Maribel had stood up, gone to sit beside her at the table, and looked her daughter in the eye, covering her hand with her own.

“Santanita, you should call her,” she said quietly but firmly, squeezing her daughter’s hand. “You love her, you miss her, and she is single now, no?”

Santana’s head had jerked up, and she had widened her eyes, trying to bluff against her mother’s directness. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

In truth, what she didn’t know was how her mother knew that Brittany had broken up with Sam, right before leaving for MIT, and whether or not she had gotten together with anyone since. Although Santana had felt, the last time she saw Brittany after her performance in Regionals, that she had finally come to peace with her relationship for her, that she forgave and loved her every bit as much as she always had, what she didn’t have was a sense of certainty or closure on just what it was they had now, or what they might in the future. And Brittany certainly hadn’t helped with that. She was always a sporadic communicator even in the best of times, and now, as busy as MIT kept her, her texts, Facebook posts, and Skype sessions seemed to grow so infrequent and short that Santana often drove herself crazy wondering if Brittany was eventually going to stop entirely.

“You know that Brittany’s Facebook page is open to the public, Corazon, and Whitney Pierce and I talk,” Maribel had reminded Santana, squeezing her hand and giving her an affectionate smile. “All Brittany talks about is colorful math equations, cats, and strange food combinations. I do not think that she is seeing anyone and I know that she would love to see you tonight. I would bet she is doing the exact same thing that you are, sitting at the table moping into her fajitas.”

“Brittany doesn’t have fajitas for Thanksgiving, Mami,” Santana had told her, but she was furrowing her brow, considering her mother’s statement. As much as she stalked Brittany’s Facebook page, she too knew that her mother’s assessment of its content was true. There had been no half naked photos, rants about drunken make outs, or musings about equations for hotness since before MIT…but did that really mean anything?

“She has fajitas when she comes here,” Maribel said quietly, patting her daughter’s hand. “And as she did not last year, I would think that she is overdue.”

Santana was quiet, thinking about the implication of her mother’s words. It was true; last year, having so recently broken up, it had been the first time that Brittany, as well as her abuela, had been absent from Thanksgiving. Santana had barely touched her food before going upstairs and sobbing into a stuffed cat Brittany had once given her until it was wet and sticky with her tears (and a fair share of snot). She knew that if her mami allowed her to have a glass of wine after the meal, as she usually did, then she would undoubtedly repeat the same incident this year. 

Maribel sighed, squeezing her daughter’s hand one last time before standing up, taking her plate in her hands to clear the table.

“Corazon, sometimes you must push past fear to receive what you want or need,” she told her. “Give her a call. You know she is waiting for it. And besides, you know you should take your mami’s advice. How often have you done so and it turned out I was wrong?”

She nudged her arm, waiting for Santana to stand and help her, and after a few moments she did, trying to keep her face blank, lest her mother see something in her expression that she didn’t want her to. The damned part of it all was that Maribel was right. She usually was right about things, annoying as that might be.

She helped her mother in silence, but as soon as the last dish was in the dishwasher and the last bit of leftovers was stored away, Santana slipped off into her bedroom, fumbling for her phone with shaking hands. She had barely breathed out Brittany’s name and heard her answer in turn, her voice heavy with relief Santana was overwhelmed to hear, than all her anxiety seemed to dissipate into nothing. Her tensed limbs relaxed, and she sighed, knowing that yet again, her mother was right.

She didn’t know what she was doing in her life or even who she was, at times. But she knew one thing, and that was that she wanted Brittany by her side as she figured it out.

88

It hadn’t taken more than a few exchanges back and forth for Brittany to announce, rather than wait to be invited, that she was coming over. Santana had paced the living room, ignoring her mother’s knowing smirk, and almost ran to get the door when she heard Brittany’s car pull into the driveway. The moment Brittany’s arms were around her in an embrace so forceful she lifted her off her feet, Santana felt as if the piece of herself that had been missing, that she had been so aimlessly searching for, for so long, had finally clicked into place. This was who she was. This was where she belonged.

She didn’t kiss her, not in front of Maribel’s watchful gaze, but when Brittany nuzzled her neck and then gave her a sweet Eskimo kiss, Santana knew that she had melted into a dimpled smile. She loved the way Brittany’s hand stayed on the small of her back, almost protective as she walked with her into the living room.

“I’m sure the parade is on repeat again. Watch it with me?”

And what answer could she possibly give her other than yes?

88

The only way that the evening could have seemed more perfect to Santana was if she and Brittany were alone together in her bedroom, and the idea was already firmly fixed in her mind that within the next hour or so, as soon as she could reasonably excuse herself from her mother’s presence for the night, it was definitely going to happen.

Santana could not remember the last time she had felt so relaxed, so completely comfortable in her own skin, in the presence of another person. Although Kurt and Rachel had become her family- as weird and slightly disturbing as that was- she never quite let her guard down all the way with them, never quite let them see her as less than at least partly guarded. Although she was comfortable with them, she was still not quite safe to be all of who Santana Lopez was, not as she was with Brittany. With Brittany she could let herself soften, let herself sink into her body and her presence and let herself be small and protected. She could let herself feel safe, and admit to herself without words that she needed that feeling to be able to lower her heavy defenses at last.

Head against Brittany’s shoulder, one land curled lightly around her arm, Santana’s eyes half closed, paying little attention to the images on the television screen before them. She was thoroughly enjoying Brittany’s fingernails, lightly scraping over the skin of her arm, her fingers stroking gently through her hair and scratching at her scalp, the warmth of her slightly larger body against her own. She appreciated too the way her mother, sitting slightly apart from them on Santana’s other side, was allowing her feet to rest against her thigh, how every so often she looked up over her wine glass and smiled tenderly, giving Santana’s foot a pat or rubbing her thumb over the bone of her ankle. It was as though she were giving her a silent blessing, assuring her that her choice, her current positioning, was a good thing, something that she personally approved of. And although normally Santana would roll her eyes at this, tonight, she was just too comfortable and content to do anything but smile. 

She was in danger of drifting to sleep under Brittany’s tender touch when the sound of heavy, strangely thudding footsteps approaching stirred her back into full consciousness. Lifting her head, Santana blinked, squinting through the room’s dim lighting as she took in the sight of her father, Dr. Lopez, standing in the entranceway to the living room. Beside her, her mother straightened up, removing her hand from Santana’s foot as she smiled brightly, starting to stand up.

“Home at last! We are glad to see you, Carlos. Brittany is here as well, isn’t that lovely?”

But then she paused, her smile dropping, and her brow furrowed into a concerned frown as she looked at her husband more closely, reaching out a hand towards him as though wanting to draw him closer.

“Carlos? Carlos, you look ill. You should have gone home if you weren’t feeling well, you know how I always tell you that. Do you have a fever?”

As her mother took another step towards him, Santana too sat up straight, her eyes narrowing as she observed what her mother was noticing. She was right, her father definitely didn’t look his usual self. Normally a fairly serious, very put together man, neatly groomed and composed in demeanor, he was now swaying slightly, almost swaggering in his stance, and his hair was mussed all over his head, his eyes strangely glazed, mouth slightly open. He looked drunk to Santana, or maybe drugged. But she knew her father better than that. He was much too serious about his work to be messing around with something like that on the job- after all, this was a man who had missed Thanksgiving with his family to work. Her mother was right, something was definitely very wrong.

Santana felt Brittany tense up beside her, her suddenly cool hand coming to rest on Santana’s arm, as though instinctively wanting to keep her pressed down beside her. Santana watched as her mother continued to walk forward towards him, and sudden, sharp dread clinching itself around her heart, and she started to stand up, despite Brittany’s hand, her mouth opening to call out a warning. Something she couldn’t have explained was telling her that her mother should not move any closer, that she should, in fact, be backing away.

But even as she opened her mouth, her mother was already jerking back with a shriek, because Dr. Lopez was suddenly lunging forward towards her, hands curled into claw-like shapes, his mouth open wide as though he had every intention to bite.


	2. 2

Maribel Lopez’s reflexes were fast, and she leapt backwards, just out of his grasp, and continued to backpedal fast, trying to place between herself and her husband various objects of furniture. She shoved the coffee table in his path, then moved behind a bulky armchair, calling out to him loudly, “Carlos, what are you doing, what is the matter with you?! Santana, get up, get out of here, go upstairs!”

But Santana didn’t listen to her mother; it wouldn’t have even been a possible course of action in her consciousness to leave her, not when her father seemed intent on causing her harm. She didn’t understand at all what was happening, and she didn’t try to make sense of it. All she knew then was that her father was dangerous in this exact moment in time, that he was chasing after her mother, snapping his teeth at her with a terrible look in his eyes, as though he had every intention of hurting her, and that meant that he had to be stopped. 

Acting on pure adrenalized instinct, Santana screamed without words, trying to draw her father’s attention to her instead of Maribel, and seized her mother’s half full wine glass, flinging it at his head. It hit its mark, falling to the floor and shattering, but it didn’t seem to cause him any real injury, let alone lasting harm. What it was successful in was turning his attention instead to his daughter, and Dr. Lopez began to shuffle in her direction, vacant eyes cast somewhere in the direction of her face. 

Santana fled towards the kitchen, the room adjoining to the living room, with Brittany on her heels, even as her father turned towards her. She could hear her mother shouting both his name and hers, telling him to stop, telling Santana to run outside, but Santana barely heard or processed her words. As she grabbed up a kitchen chair, raising it defensively in front of herself, as though to use it as a shield, she saw Brittany stop and try to block the kitchen entranceway with her body, as though to stop her father from being able to come inside and access Santana. And that was when he seized hold of Brittany’s arms, his nails digging deeply into her skin, and leaned in close, mouth open wide to bite. 

Dropping the chair, Santana shrieked Brittany’s name, racing over and locking her arms around the blonde’s middle. She pulled her back with all her strength, breaking her father’s grasp on her, just as his front teeth scraped the surface of her throat. Brittany’s eyes were wide open, her breath coming in panting gasps, and Santana could see little beads of blood bubble up at her throat, small streaks of it trickling down her arms where her father’s nails had broken the skin. Still grasping her around the waist, she deposited her into the chair she had dropped, snatching up another and holding it threateningly in front of her as her father continued to lurch forward.

“Get away from us!” she shouted, aware of her voice trembling, of the muscles in her arms threatening to give from the chair’s weight and her own shock. “What the hell is wrong with you, have you gone fucking crazy?! Go away!”

But her father was still moving forward, his jaw slack, and Santana was backing further up, knowing that soon her back would be against the wall. She was going to have to hit him, and what if it didn’t hurt him? What if-

Just then she saw the shape of her mother come up behind him, seeming larger than usual in that moment as she lifted a heavy vase from the living room side table and slammed it into the base of her husband’s skull. When he staggered, his knees buckling, she hit him again, then again, until he fell into a heap on the floor.

Santana wasn’t sure how badly he was hurt, whether he was conscious, or even alive. All she knew was that her father was face down on their kitchen floor, unmoving, and her own breath was coming in shallow gasps and pants that made her chest burn with pain at her efforts. She heard her own voice from somewhere far away, squeaking out her mother’s name, and then Maribel was coming forward, wrapping her tightly in arms that were trembling as badly as Santana’s own as she stroked her daughter’s hair, kissing her head repeatedly in different places.

“Shhh. Shhh, mi Corazon, shhh, it will be okay. You are okay, we will be okay.”

“Mami,” Santana whispered in a voice she barely recognized, her hands tightly gripping into her mother’s shirt as she held her back almost as fiercely as her mother held her. “Is…is Papi dead?”

“I don’t know, baby,” Maribel told her, kissing her head again as she squeezed her even closer to her. “Don’t look, do you hear me, Santanita, do not look, or you, Brittany. Take a deep breath…go to Brittany, baby, and I will call 911. Your papi is ill. He is ill and they will care for him…though how they did not recognize this at the hospital…”

She let her voice trail off as she released her daughter with one last fierce kiss, then went to get her cell phone off the coffee table. As she began to dial 911, Santana gathered herself with one more shuddering breath in to go to Brittany, who was still sitting on the chair she had deposited her in, breathing with slow, heavy breaths that made her chest rise and fall visibly. 

“You’re bleeding,” Santana said to her shakily, kneeling in front of her and brushing Brittany’s hair back from her eyes. “Brittany, he scratched you, are you okay?” 

Brittany didn’t answer her. She didn’t seem to be looking at Santana so much as through her, and when Santana called her name again, her eyes did not snap into focus. When Santana cupped her cheek in her hand, telling her that it was okay, they were going to be all right in a voice that was far from certain of this fact, Brittany did not respond. An occasional tremor ran through her, but she didn’t speak, didn’t look at Brittany, and the vacancy in her eyes scared Santana to see. She must be in shock, she figured; she knew how much Brittany hated violence of any kind, and this had been a terrible thing for her to see. Maybe Brittany should go to the hospital too, just to make sure that she was going to be all right. It definitely wouldn’t hurt.

Santana glanced over at her mother, her eyes darting between her and the still prone form of her father on the floor, and she saw that her mother had ended the call and was dialing again. She watched as Maribel’s eyes narrowed, her brow scrunching up with confusion, and she continued to dial and end the call, over and over, as Santana’s own bewilderment and anxiety rose. How hard was it to call 911?

“Mami, what’s going on?” she asked, hating the shrillness of her own voice but unable to control it. 

Finally Maribel turned towards her, her eyes glinting with a fear that she seemed unable to quite hide from her daughter. She shook her head, her voice slightly hoarse as she answered.

“Santana, no one is picking up. The phone just rings and rings. I do not understand.”

“That’s not possible!” Santana almost screamed back at her, her arm automatically tightening around Brittany’s shoulders as though to shield her from these words, or to try to encourage her to wrap her arms around her and hold her in turn, as she normally would have. “Mami, it’s 911, they have to pick up, that’s their fucking job! You aren’t dialing it right, you’re not doing it right!”

“Santana, would you like to see the record of my outgoing calls?” Maribel snapped back at her, for once letting Santana’s swearing in front of her go in favor of addressing the larger issue at hand. “I dialed it correctly, but no one is there. Something is wrong. We will have to go to the hospital ourselves, or maybe the police.”

“But what about Papi? We can’t take Papi with us, what if he wakes up and…” Santana let her voice trail off, knowing very well that her mother understood her concern. She squeezed Brittany a little tighter, noticing that the blonde did not react at all to her touch, that she in fact seemed oblivious to anything at all around her. It was as though Brittany had retreated into herself, leaving an outward shell of her body with no one home inside.

“We have to leave him, Santana,” Maribel replied, understanding her concern. She gave a worried glance back at her husband, biting her lip briefly, and then reached to take hold of her daughter’s arm, giving her a gentle pull. “We need to get out of this house, if they police and ambulance will not answer us we must go to them. We will talk to them and tell them what is going on, and they will come back and help your father. Come, Santana, and you too, Brittany. Are you all right, sweetheart? When we get to the hospital we will have someone look at those scratches.”

Brittany didn’t react to Maribel’s words addressed towards her. Just as with Santana, she didn’t seem to hear or process what she was saying. When Maribel took Santana’s hand, and Santana looked back at Brittany, slipping her hand into hers and giving her a gentle tug, Brittany didn’t stand up until Santana had called her name several more times. Even then she seemed to be responding more to her accompanying tugs then to the sound of her voice. With the three women forming almost a single file, connected by hands, Maribel lead the way, stopping only to scoop up her purse and keys. It didn’t’ register to Santana that she was wearing pajamas and so were the others, that she was hastily shoving her feet into winter boots and none of them were wearing coats to head out in the November weather. Her mother didn’t stop to address those things, and that spoke volumes of her concern over the current situation.

Once the women were outside and heading towards the car, with Santana pulling Brittany into the backseat and buckling her seatbelt for her when Brittany failed to do so, Maribel almost burned rubber pulling out of the garage and hitting the road. Santana could see her jaw set, her knuckles white with her grip on the steering wheel, and her anxiety rose further. If her mother, who was normally very calm and level headed, was this worried, then this situation definitely warranted the level of fear that Santana was feeling. She gripped Brittany’s arm tightly in hers, pressing herself close against her side, and fiercely wished to feel the girl’s hand stroking through her hair, rubbing over her arm, providing her the soothing that she normally would when Santana was upset. But Brittany didn’t touch her, and still she did not respond to Santana’s touch. It was a whole other thing for Santana to worry about- what if Brittany was so upset that something was now seriously wrong with her? 

But her fears for her mother’s fear, for Brittany’s strange behavior, were immediately overtaken by a much more immediate concern as Maribel drove. Because no sooner had Maribel started down the road of Santana’s neighborhood than Santana began to notice the chaos all around them. There were people running out of their front doors, screaming, being chased by others who seemed to lumber and stumble in a very familiar manner- in exactly the manner that her own father had moved. It was difficult for Maribel to drive, because the street was packed with other cars, each seeming to ignore speeds, stop signs, and other road signs in their haste to get away or maybe to get to somewhere else, and they all seemed to be heading in the same direction that Santana and the others in the car were. But as frightening as this was, it didn’t in any way compare to the fact that there were bodies lying at the side of the road, occasionally in the road, and on the front lawns of some of the homes. As Santana took this in, her eyes growing wider and wider as her nails began to dig marks into Brittany’s skin- to which Brittany still gave no reaction- Maribel gave a short shriek as she swerved wildly, trying to avoid a still-moving body in the road without careening into the path of another car.

“Mami!” Santana cried, hearing her voice rise up shrilly in volume and pitch. “What the fuck is going on?! Everyone is going crazy!”

“I don’t know…I don’t know, Santana!” Maribel called back, her own voice betraying her fear. “Call 911 again. Keep calling until someone answers!”

Santana fumbled for her phone, thankful that she had had the presence of mind to remember to bring it, and began to do as her mother had told her, dialing the number. As her mother had reported previously, no one answered the line. It rang and rang and rang. Hanging up, Santana dialed again, her heart pounding hard in her chest, and again, no response. She had just hung up and was bracing herself to dial again when the phone rang in her hand, startling her so badly she let out a shriek and nearly threw it towards Maribel in the front seat. For one wild moment of hope she thought that maybe the emergency line people had noticed her calls at last and was calling her back, but then she saw that Quinn’s name was flashing across her lit screen. By instinct rather than any real desire to speak with her, Santana answered the call, not even trying to lower her voice.

“Hello? Quinn, can you get through to 911, it’s fucking crazy, everything is completely insane!”

 

“Santana?” Quinn cut her off; like Brittany, she didn’t seem to be listening to what Santana was saying to her. But it was the taut, barely controlled tone of her voice that got to Santana. It was rare indeed for Quinn Fabray to show any kind of fear, and hearing it in her voice then, she listened, giving the other girl her full attention.

“Santana, my mother is having some kind of breakdown. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but she came home late and she isn’t talking to me. She’s just making these horrible noises and acting like she’s going to…I don’t know, hurt me or…bite me, or something. I managed to get her into the downstairs bathroom and I shoved a table in front of it. My back’s against the table now, but even though she isn’t very strong she’s very persistent, and 911 isn’t answering-“

“We’ll come and get you,” Santana cut her off, not even giving a second thought as to whether this was the right thing to do. “We’re on our way, hang up the phone and just keep the fucking door shut.”

“Santana-“ Quinn started, and Santana realized then that the muffled noises she was hearing in the background weren’t actually from outside of the car, as she had assumed. They were coming from her phone, in the background, and they sounded like strangled shrieks. It was Quinn’s mother, she realized…prim, formal Judy Fabray was screeching like a caged animal, which was exactly what she seemed to have become.

“We’ll be there,” Santana promised her, and that was that. Hanging up the phone, she leaned forward, shouting out to her mother over the cacophony outside of their car. “Mami, it’s Quinn, we have to get Quinn! Her mom is doing the same thing Papi is, we have to get her, hurry!”

Maribel didn’t ask her any questions. She simply changed the direction of the car as soon as she was able to, changing course to go by Quinn’s house.

Things between Santana and Quinn had strange, since Mr. Shue’s aborted wedding back in February. Ever since their night of “experimentation,” as Quinn had phrased and Santana had accepted it to be, Santana had felt not exactly uncomfortable towards her, but different. She had expected, once Quinn was sober, that the other girl would draw back from her, stiff, embarrassed, and in denial about what had taken place- she was a Fabray, after all, and it would take more than one night, even one with Santana Lopez, to totally remove the stick that was usually stuck up her admittedly very well shaped ass. Their communication with each other had become more sporadic, between Quinn’s business at Yale and Santana’s generally poor tendency to seek people out rather than allow them to contact her first, but Santana knew that no matter what may ever happen between them, if she ever really needed Quinn, or Quinn ever really needed her, they would be there for each other, no questions asked. Quinn needed her now, Quinn had asked, and that left no option possible but to go to her.


	3. 3

Quinn’s neighborhood is every bit as jammed full of fleeing, dying, and obviously dangerous people as Santana’s had been, and Maribel continues to struggle simply to dodge the bodies just to pull into Quinn’s driveway. Santana didn’t wait for her to pull all the way up or come to a full stop. The moment the car was within fifty feet of the house, she threw open her door and jumped out, yelling for her mother and Brittany to hurry up, help her, without even looking behind her to see if they were following. It was a mark of how worried she was for Quinn’s sake that she let Brittany alone, even for a minute. In her fear for Quinn, she assumed that her mother would care for her, make sure she got safely in the home after her.

Santana could hear the sound of what she hoped was Judy Fabray’s rather than Quinn’s screams the moment she got up to the doorstep, even before she opened it and went inside. Santana couldn’t hear Quinn screaming back at her, or making any noise at all, and so she shouted at the top of her voice, hoping not only to alert Quinn to her help arriving, but also to possibly distract Judy and divert her attention enough for Quinn to get the winning hand over her.

“QUINN!!! I’M HERE!!!! I’M HERE, WHAT DO YOU NEED, WHERE ARE YOU!!!!”

From a distance, over the continued noise from Judy, Santana heard Quinn yelling back to her, unmistakable relief as well as fear in her tone. “In the bathroom closest in the first floor hall! Hurry, she’s almost pushed the door open, help me!”

Santana knew where Quinn was talking about and rushed forward, adrenaline pumping heavily through her veins. She could hear the front door open again, her mother calling out to Quinn as well, and she looked behind herself only fast enough to register that Maribel had a hand on Brittany’s arm and was leading her along beside her as she called back to them, “This way, she needs help, go!”

Santana saw Quinn’s curved back, her slim arms straining, muscles visible as she braced her heels against the wall opposite the bathroom door, pushing against the small hallway table she was using to keep it closed with all her might. She was strong, years of dance and Cheerios having increased her muscle mass despite her small size, but Judy was every bit as determined as she had described, and with every rough shove she gave to the door, the table rocked badly, almost jarred out of the way. Quinn’s arms were shaking, her teeth gritted with strain, and as Santana hurried to join her in holding the table, she called out to her mother, drawing closer. 

“Brittany, get back, Mami, keep Brittany out of the way! Get something else to help us out!”

She didn’t look to see if Maribel was doing as she asked. Instead she just put her shoulder into the table, grunting with surprise at how much effort it was to help Quinn hold it in place. Her hair already hanging in her eyes, greatly irritating her, Santana gasped out to Quinn without being able to really look at her, “How long has she been like this…what the hell happened? It’s like every other person in town has eaten an overdose of Cuckoo Crisp tonight!”

“I don’t know,” Quinn bit out, her blonde hair having almost entirely escaped its loose ponytail as she dug in her heels, every muscle in her back taut with her continued efforts. “I don’t know- and I can’t talk and still concentrate on-“

She didn’t even finish the sentence before Judy gave one particularly hard shove, which knocked the door against the table and into Santana and Quinn’s hips, setting them both off balance on their feet. As they both stumbled, losing their firm stance, she shoved out at the door again, and the table crashed forward, knocking both Quinn and Santana into the opposing wall with bruising force against their ribs. 

Santana didn’t have time to cry out; she had the air temporarily knocked out of her lungs, sharp pain flaring through her ribs and up her torso. As Judy pushed the table out of her way and slipped out of the bathroom and into the hallway, she braced herself for some sort of attack. One hand automatically reached out for Quinn beside her, as though seeking to shield her in some way, or maybe just to seek comfort from the touch. 

But Judy ignored them. She barely seemed to see them, hunched over in pained response to the table’s knock. Instead, she shoved the table further out of her way, which sent it knocking even more roughly against the half-pinned girls, and loped at fairly rapid speed down the hallway- where Maribel was returning with Brittany, a large fireplace poker in one hand. Santana noticed with a jolt that Judy’s eyes looked empty, despite her jerky, aggressive movements, that her mouth was slack, and there was what looked like blood drying on the fabric of her shoulder. It reminded her of her father, of the blood still streaking Brittany’s skin, and she glanced back at Brittany, remembering with sharp guilt that she needed to be caring for her, as soon as she could.

“Mami- Brittany!-“ Santana wheezed, shoving the table off herself and Quinn at last as she attempted to move forward. “Britt, get BACK-“

But she didn’t need to worry about Brittany, as it turned out. As the blonde stared placidly in the direction of Judy, without seeming bothered by her appearance or her actions in the slightest, Judy ignored her, not even seeming to see her. Instead she turned towards Maribel, lips drawn back in a snarl, seeming to have every intention of taking her down as she stretched out her hands, making a wild clawing motion in her direction. Maribel grimaced but didn’t hesitate to swing the poker hard, cracking it twice across Judy’s ribs. Judy staggered but didn’t touch her ribs or fall. Rather, she continued forward, no longer trying to attack Maribel, and stumbled out the front door. Maribel followed her, poker raised high as she called Judy’s name, prepared to defend herself, but clearly concerned about her as well. 

“  
“Judy? You’re not well. Judy, you are in need of help, you should not-“

As Santana turned to Quinn, looking her over more thoroughly for any injuries now that she had a moment to spare to do so, she heard a screeching of tires, a heavy thudding noise, and her mother’s sharp cry from the front porch. Her head snapping up, she clutched Quinn close to her, her heart pounding as her mother hurriedly ducked back into the house, slamming and locking the door behind her. She could see how pale she was as Maribel came closer to them, her eyes wide with shock as she shook her head.

“Mami?” Santana asked at the same time that Quinn echoed, “Mrs. Lopez? What…what’s happening out there?”

Maribel shook her head, her lips pressing into a thin line, and she looked from her daughter to Quinn, still shaking her head as she answered, her voice weak, barely audible.

“Quinn…sweetheart, your mother ran into the road, and someone ran her over,” Maribel told her, moving forward to rest a hand that was part comforting, part anticipatory restraint on the girl’s arm. “I think she’s dead, honey, but I’m not sure. Don’t look, you don’t need to see this. None of you girls need to see this. What we need to do now is keep calling 911 until someone comes through for us, and stay in this house. Lock all the doors, all the windows, and if she hurt you, Quinn, show us so we can look.”

Santana watched, numb with shock at this newest revelation as Quinn’s entire face flinched. She looked as though Maribel had slapped her as the information began to sink in. Santana saw her start to shake, her teeth chattering once or twice before she lifted her chin, taking a long, slow breath, and stiffened every muscle in her body, seeming to gather her will to force herself to stop. Santana herself could not process this, not then. Judy Fabray was hardly her favorite person in the world, but she was someone she had known and seen often for years. She was Quinn’s mother, and no matter how up and down their relationship might be, this would be something terrible for Quinn to go through, something that might permanently mark her the rest of her life. 

Even as she thought this, Santana’s thoughts crept back to her own father, perhaps up now, concussed and more angry than ever, perhaps still unconscious…or was he dead too? Had she too lost a parent today?

As much in response to this sobering thought as to Quinn, Santana wrapped her arms around her, squeezing Quinn to her tightly in an effort to receive and provide comfort. Her stomach churned as she tried not to think about just how Judy’s body might look now, whether she was even then slowly dying, without anyone stopping to help her, or even checking to see if she was still alive. She could feel Quinn’s heart racing against hers, her breathing slightly too fast against her shoulder as she spoke to her, trying to keep her voice calm but hearing it shake nevertheless.

“It’s okay, Quinn. It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

She knew even as she said it that she was almost undoubtedly full of shit. How was it possible for them to be okay if her mother was dead and possibly Santana’s father, if half the town had just gone crazy and killed a large percentage of whoever was left? It wasn’t possible, and yet she had to say something, and this was the only phrase that came to mind.

She felt Quinn take another deep breath, then nod against her, her arms coming up slowly and very lightly around Santana to hug her back. 

“Okay…yeah, okay. We’re okay.”

Quinn must be in shock too; it sounded like she was echoing what Santana said more than really responding. But then she repeated it a little more strongly, pulling back, and Santana let her go, relieved. If Quinn could put on the Fabray mask still, even now, maybe she was right. Maybe somehow it really would be okay.

Santana intended then to go back to Brittany, hug and soothe her as well, get her to sit down on Quinn’s living room couch where she could start to patch her up and reassure herself that Brittany too was going to be okay. She was horrified and frightened, in shock and upset, but she wasn’t badly hurt, and no matter how upset she was right now, she would be okay. Santana would make sure of that, and she was sure her mother and Quinn would too, even with all that Quinn was having to deal with in this moment. 

She turned back towards Brittany, the girl’s name on her lips, and saw that the girl was moving of her own accord now, slow, deliberate steps towards where Maribel remained, standing slightly stoop shouldered with her back mostly turned against the others, dialing 911 and listening to it ring repeatedly. Santana thought at first that Brittany was going to listen to the other end of the line, or maybe try to hug Maribel or speak with her from a closer proximity, and she started to relax, just slightly. Yes, Brittany was going to be okay. If she was starting to react to other people, if she was starting to show her more characteristic concern for them, then she was going to be okay-

But then Quinn’s nails were suddenly digging into Santana’s skin, and she was yanking her back towards her with sudden forcefulness, hissing out loud to her when Santana yelped. 

“Look at Brittany, Santana- look at her eyes!”

And Santana saw it. The strange, empty look that had been present in her father’s face, in Judy Fabray’s…it was echoed now in Brittany’s. What she had mistaken for Brittany’s occasional blankness, for a reaction to extreme stress and fear, was much more intense and prevalent than she had initially judged it to be. Brittany didn’t look like Brittany anymore as she continued to move forward towards her mother, with singular focus that nevertheless did not allow her eyes to fixate fully on Maribel at all. She looked like a moving body with no one existing within it.

“Brittany- no!” Santana gasped from within Quinn’s tight grasp as Brittany’s hand shot out, seizing her mother’s shirt by the back of its collar and pulling her in close to her. “Mami- MAMI, LOOK OUT-“

But Maribel had no time to heed her warning; Brittany was too fast to allow her that. Her mouth opening wide, her hands holding tightly to one of Maribel’s arms and one hip, she sank her teeth deeply into the back of the older woman’s neck, ripping and tearing at the skin until she pulled back with a mouthful of flesh and blood.


	4. 4

Santana screamed almost in perfect unison with her mother, her eyes bulging with her horrified disbelief at what she was seeing. Ripping herself out of Quinn’s grip, she hurried forward, locking her arms around Brittany’s waist and pulling at her as hard as she could, to no avail. The taller, stronger blonde ignored her, not even attempting to knock her away from her as she continued to sink her teeth into Maribel’s back, shoulders, and upper arms, heedless of the woman’s jerky thrashing and shrieks of pain, of the blood now streaked all over her face, chest, and arms as she bit her, over and over…and from what Santana could see, she was chewing.

She was trying to eat her mother. She was trying to EAT HER, and it looked like she was actually succeeding, while her mother was still entirely alive.

“BRITTANY STOP!” Santana screeched so loudly with such force that it felt to her like something had just torn inside her chest. 

She pulled with all of her strength, then seized hold of Brittany’s hair, tugging so roughly that she felt strands come loose in her hand. But it didn’t seem to deter Brittany at all, other than to cause a low growl to escape her throat. If anything, she seemed to be determined to hang onto Maribel with even more possessiveness than she had before, and each time that Santana pulled her hair, it only seemed to jerk her head a little, causing her to bite more deeply into her mother.

Her heart hammering beyond control, her stomach churning and sloshing heavily with intense nausea, Santana pulled at Brittany with increasing desperation, unable to come up with any other idea of what to do. She had to get her off of her mother, she had to make her stop, make her normal, she had to help her mother, but how? She wasn’t strong enough, she didn’t know what to do, and her mother was hurt, badly. Her mother could be dying, her mother would die, and-

She didn’t see Quinn coming forward, Maribel’s dropped fireplace poker firmly grasped in both hands. She didn’t see her raise it high over her head and bring it down squarely in the middle of Brittany’s, so hard that a loud crack echoed through the entire room, even over the sound of Maribel’s now weakening screams. Brittany didn’t blink, hardly reacted at all to the blow other than to stagger, her grip and bite on Maribel loosening enough that the woman fell in a bloody heap to the floor before her. As Santana let go of Brittany, kneeling hurriedly to try, as gently as possible, to drag her mother out of Brittany’s direct path, she saw out of the corner of her eye Quinn, raising the poker again, then again, each time bringing it down on Brittany’s skull.

This was not happening. This could not be happening, none of this was real. Her father had not gone crazy, he had not tried to attack her mother. He wasn’t lying in their home, unconscious or dead, and there had not been others, just like him, chasing her neighbors up and down the street. Judy Fabray had not attacked her own daughter, and she was not dead, her mother was wrong. Brittany had not hurt her mother. Brittany would never hurt anyone, let alone the woman that had made her bunny pancakes on Saturdays for years.

But how else could she explain to herself Brittany’s huddled form on the floor, her head dented in and bleeding, her blonde hair stuck all over the ends of the poker still gripped in Quinn’s shaking hands? How could she explain her mother’s blood over her lips and chin, her…god…her mother’s SKIN, stuck in little pieces in between her teeth? How could she explain her mother, twitching and moaning and breathing in wet, choking gasps under her own bloodied hands, if none of this had ever happened, if this was all some crazy nightmare or some strange delusion?

Santana’s chest heaved with her efforts to control the intense emotions still running through her, and she could see her hands shaking badly as she tried to push back her mother’s hair from her face, to gather her so that she was cradled in her arms, her head on her knees. Her mother did not seem to see or recognize her, and she could not longer speak. She was just gasping, her eyes bright with pain, as Santana released a torrent of words, half English and half Spanish, that would do nothing to help her at all.

“Mami, oh Mami, no, no…no, please, please hang on, no…we have to help her, we have to get something to help her! Fuck….Quinn, Quinn, please get something to help her, her and Brittany too, hurry, please, hurry!”

 

Quinn was shaking too, her grip not loosening on her poker at all. Not just her knuckles but the majority of her hand had gone white from her grasp. She was swallowing frequently, her eyes darting from Brittany to Santana and Maribel as she answered in a stammer, “T-towels. There’s t-towels in the bathroom, get them…and the, the first aid kit. Get them, Santana, and put pressure on your mother’s wounds.”

HER? She wanted HER to get up and get this, when her mother needed her, when her mother needed to know she was there, that she wouldn’t leave her, for even a second? It wasn’t even a consideration to Santana. She shook her head hard, her teeth chattering slightly as she too stammered in her reply.

“N-no. No, I c-can’t. I won’t leave her, I c-can’t leave her, go get it, Quinn, go!”

“Santana,” Quinn started, her own voice rising, almost a yell. “Santana, Brittany isn’t normal! You have to know that, if she gets up again, you have to be able to do something! If she wakes up-“

“I won’t leave my mother!” Santana shrieked, no longer even attempting to remain calm. Clutching her mother to her chest, hunched over her as though to shield her from Quinn trying to take her away, she shook her head again, hard, rocking back and forth. “I won’t leave my mother, I won’t leave Brittany, I won’t, you can’t make me, you can’t fucking make me, you go, you, Quinn, you, you, you!”

Why would Quinn do this to her? Why would she even try to make her stay, when that might mean that her mother would be alone, without someone to hold her and tell her she would be okay? What if in the minute it took Santana to leave her mother, her mother became so frightened she gave up and-

No, Santana couldn’t think that anything might happen where her mother might not survive. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible so she wouldn’t think it, and it couldn’t happen. It just wouldn’t.

She could hear Quinn leave without her, apparently giving up on any efforts to make Santana be the one. As the blonde returned, starting to help Santana to try to shift Maribel enough that they could wrap the towels around her, Santana was horrified to see how fast the towels were soaked through, how heavily her own arms and shirt were already stained, her mother’s life force sticky on her skin. She heard herself chanting “oh god, oh god,” more a cry than a prayer, as she tried to press the towels against her mother’s skin.

But Maribel was not making it easy. As Quinn had knelt down, towels in hand, the older woman’s face had begun to sag in on itself, her already pallid skin seeming to grow rigid as the woman began to thrash and fight against the girls, guttural noises escaping her throat. She kicked out at Santana, her weak, shaky arms raising up as she tried to claw at her, and Santana’s heart leapt into her throat as she realized. Her mother’s eyes too were changing, taking on the same blank sheen of her father’s, of Judy Fabray’s, of Brittany’s. Even as this realization came to her, her mother craned her neck forward, snapping her teeth as she tried to get close enough to bite.

“She’s changing too, watch out!” Quinn cried out, her own hands joining Santana’s as she helped her pin Maribel’s arms down. 

Maribel’s efforts were weak, her efforts to scratch the girls more pathetic than genuinely threatening, but she was nevertheless persisting, doing what she could to try to draw blood, to get her face close enough to Santana’s to bite down. Santana was panting, more from adrenaline and emotional overload than a genuine difficulty in holding her mother down, but she hung on, half sobbing. 

This should not be happening. Her mother was hurt, her mother was sick, her mother, who had never even slapped her, all her life, no matter how much she deserved it, should not be trying to eat her alive. She should not be having to sit on her mother, hurting her even further as she gradually bled out, just to protect herself from suffering the same fate.

“Stop,” Santana begged her mother, hearing the helplessness in her voice, the near despair, seeing the tears drip onto her mother’s shirt, but unable to stop herself from sounding that way. “Mami, stop, please, it’s me. Mami, don’t do this, please…”

Out the corner of her eye, she could see Brittany stir, her limbs twitching several times before she slowly, with ill coordination, but steady persistence, rolled over and to her feet. Her head was still split open, from Quinn’s strikes, slowly trickling blood from her scalp, and perhaps from the injury, she swayed and staggered, but she was walking, moving forward towards them with determined effort. 

Quinn froze, scrambling to her feet, and angled her body in such a way that it was blocking Brittany from being able to have unrestricted access to Santana and her mother. Brittany continued forward, her head lolling to the side, mouth open, and Santana’s eyes darted between her, Quinn’s taut form in front of her, and her mother, still struggling with increasing weakness under her, her panic building up quickly.

“Brittany, no…Brittany, stop, please, no…” she pleaded, biting down on the inside of her cheeks. She could still see the blood streaking the blonde’s face, wedged in beneath her nails and drying on her hands. “Brittany, don’t. Don’t…”

“Stay back!” Quinn was shouting, and Santana saw that she had snatched up the fallen poker again, was holding it in her hands threateningly, almost like she might hold a spear. “Santana, don’t get up, hold your mom down, don’t- BRITTANY STOP!”

But Brittany was lunging towards her, a terrible snarl escaping her as her lips peeled back, showing all of her bloodied teeth. Santana shrieked without words, her nails digging into her mother’s skin as she tried to shield her, even as she tried to prevent Maribel from harming her at the same time. A part of her was terrifyingly certain that she was about to see Quinn hurt too, and she would be left alone. 

But she didn’t give her enough credit. Quinn Fabray had long ago lost anything that might have deemed her timid or weak, and she met Brittany head on, poker gripped in both hands. When Brittany came towards her, she came forward too, poker raised- and pierced her, directly through the throat.

Santana watched, eyes bulging in horror, too shocked to even be able to scream as Brittany’s eyes popped, her body jerking for several seconds as blood trickled down her front. The poker, still held in place by Quinn’s badly trembling hands, remained wedged in her throat, stopping the majority of blood from emerging, and Quinn held it in place, her lips trembling, until Brittany’s knees crumbled and she collapsed to the floor, her body going still. Still Quinn held onto it, as though insuring she was dead, before slowly dropping the other end of the poker, backing several steps away. Santana’s stomach lurched, and she realized dimly that someone was making strange, high pitched whimpering noises that were not quite cries, but close enough to alarm her. Was that her mother…she could see that it wasn’t Quinn, was there someone else hidden in the room? It wasn’t until she felt the tears streaking down her cheeks that she realized that the sounds were in fact coming from her.  
She could hear Quinn behind her, slowly kneeling down, felt her presence close to her even before the blonde reached out to touch her, her fingertips grazing her shoulder. Santana jerked, every muscle drawing tight as she shook her head vehemently at Quinn, not wanting her anywhere near her, let alone laying her hands on her. The same hands that had just driven the poker through Brittany’s throat. The hands that had just ended her life. 

Unwillingly her eyes moved, as though transfixed, to Brittany’s neck, no longer dripping blood, but she could still see the stains, down her chest and neck, streaking her shoulders, the terrible separation of her skin where the poker remained lodged. It was wrong, so wrong, it wasn’t the way Brittany should look at all. No one should ever harm her, no one and nothing should ever mar that pale, soft skin. It was wrong, the blood, and it shouldn’t be outside of her, ever…she needed it. She needed her blood on the inside, and the more Santana thought about this, the more frantic her thoughts grew. Maybe it didn’t make sense, maybe it was completely illogical, but all she could think was that Brittany needed her blood, if they could just give it back to her, she would be okay. If she just had all her blood back where it belonged, they could make everything okay.

“Santana,” she heard Quinn say to her, but Santana shook her head, blocking out her voice. She didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. All she wanted was for Quinn to fix this, make it right. Somehow, she had to make it right.

“Put it back,” she said, her voice hoarse, actually hurting her throat to emerge. She didn’t turn to look at Quinn, still staring, blinking rapidly, at Brittany’s still form across from them. “Put it back, Quinn, put it back! She needs it, put it back!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Quinn started, and Santana raised her voice, almost shouting back at her.

“Her blood, put it back, she can’t come back without her blood! Do something to give it back to her, you took it, now give it back!”

She heard Quinn suck in her breath behind her, even over the sound of her mother’s heels thumping the ground, her softening grunts as her voice began to fade. When Quinn touched her shoulder again, Santana pulled back almost violently, shaking her head at her so hard she felt a muscle pull in her neck.

“Don’t touch me, don’t ever fucking touch me again! Not until you make it right, not until you put her back!”

“You have to get back from your mother, Santana,” Quinn said quietly, not trying to touch her, but also not backing up from being within easy reach of her. “She’s weak, but she could still reach out and scratch you if she really tried. You need to get back. You can’t help her.”

“No,” Santana said defiantly, but her voice emerged in a near sob. “No.”

But even as she said it she could see her mother’s eyes drifting shut, sticking, as though she could not summon the strength to even blink. Her mother’s twitching limbs gave a final grasp towards her, and Santana felt Quinn’s strong arms hook around her waist and pull her back, out of her reach entirely. This time Santana didn’t fight her. She let Quinn keep hold of her, her arms firm around her, as she trembled in her grasp, wanting desperately to push her off of her, to go to her mother and wrap her in her arms, and knowing all the while that she could not, that as much as she hated it, Quinn was right.

Instead, she watched as her mother finished slowly bleeding out, as her chest finally fell and did not rise again. She watched the same terrible stillness that had taken over Brittany’s body pass over her mother’s as well, and she endured the knowledge that in her last moments of life, Maribel had been entirely alone, without anyone to hold or speak to her or comfort her at all.

Just like Brittany.


	5. 5

She didn’t realize she was crying again, the roaring in her ears blocking out all other sound, until Quinn’s voice behind her, talking to her, shushing her, started to penetrate through, like the crackling of radio static. She was only vaguely aware of the other girl’s hands gripping her shoulders, her lips close against her ear, and didn’t hear a word of what she said to her. It wasn’t until her sobbing began to die down again, her chest aching with the heavy weight of her grief, that she finally was able to pay attention to Quinn’s quiet words to her as the girl’s hands slowly rubbed over her arms, in a probable effort to soothe the goosebumps that had risen up on them.

“We need to get them out of here, Santana,” Quinn was telling her, her words soft, but firm. “We have to put them outside, and then we need to make sure everywhere someone could get in here is blocked off and locked up.”

“What?” Santana asked her, still not quite understanding. But when Quinn repeated herself, even trying to get to her feet and pull Santana up as well, she shook her head hard, understanding beginning to click into place. 

“Oh, hell no, Quinn Fabray. We are not throwing my mother and Brittany out into the street for people to do just ANYTHING to! You might be okay with your own mother left out there for anything and everything to pick apart, but no way, no fucking way am I doing that to them! No!”

“Don’t be stupid, Santana,” Quinn almost hissed, her gentleness disappearing fast at Santana’s tone, or maybe it was the words about her mother that really pushed her patience past its limit. “We have to get them out, you saw what happens to them! If they get up again, it better be outside where we don’t have to sleep with one eye open and a knife in hand! We have to get them out, and we have to block everything from getting in. I need your help, come on!”

She turned abruptly, disappearing down the hallway, and Santana felt a sharp stab of panic that caused her to follow on her heels, not wanting, despite her anger, to be left alone, even for a moment. It wasn’t being alone with Maribel and Brittany that made her nervous, although admittedly that was a concern. It was everything, the entire unnerving chaos that their lives had become so fast, that made her feel even a few seconds in solitude could be her last.

She watched at the end of the hallway as Quinn stopped in the linen closet, taking out several sheets and brushing past her with them in her arms. As Quinn threw them with a heavy swallow over each body, then very gingerly started to wrap them around them, avoiding touching the limbs or any actual body parts at all, Santana stared at her, her eyes wide, and felt her hands begin to shake again. It was hitting her once more, the finality of Quinn’s actions driving it in hard, that this truly did mean they were dead. Her mother, her girlfriend, everything in her life as she had known it was gone.

Some sort of noise of distress she was not aware of must have escaped her, because Quinn’s head turned, and she regarded her, breathing in slowly through her nose and pressing her lips into a thin line before she spoke, her voice gentler than before.

“I know it’s hard, San…believe me, I know. But we have to do this. We have to. We have to make sure we’re safe, because we can’t do anything for them anymore, except make sure we’re safe from them. You know neither of them would want to hurt us, if they were in their right minds. They would want us to make sure that it couldn’t happen, San. I need your help to make that happen.”

She knew that what Quinn was saying was reasonable and right. Brittany and her mother would never want to hurt them; they would rather be hurt themselves than do anything to hurt her. If there was any chance at all that this could happen, then they would want to be stopped. And yet to throw their bodies outside with such disregard, like they were nothing but unwanted trash, was such a horrible thought that Santana had to take several breaths before she could even articulate a response.

“We need to b-bury them,” she managed, finally meeting Quinn’s eyes. “They have to be buried.”

Quinn took a breath that matched Santana’s, seeming to be steeling herself to speak, or maybe for Santana’s response. She reached to touch Santana’s shoulder, answering her in a very measured tone. 

“We don’t have time for that, Santana. If you think about it logically for a second, you’ll understand that. I’m sorry we can’t, because you’re right, it’s not fair, but we can’t do that now, it would be dangerous and nearly impossible.”

“You’re fucking right, it isn’t fair. We’re burying Brittany and we’re burying Mami and that’s all there is to it. We have to, we owe it to them! YOU owe it to them!” Santana retorted, her eyes narrowing as she again prodded at the point that she and Quinn had not yet discussed, the fact that Brittany’s death had been by her own hand.

It was something that had not fully sunk in yet, but could not quite leave her mind. Brittany was dead, but even more incredible, Quinn had killed her. How could she stay so calm and level headed, how could she truly think it was okay to just throw Brittany out there and not even give her a decent funeral and burial when she had KILLED her? 

Quinn’s chin lifted, and her own eyes flashed at Santana’s far from subtle implication. She stepped closer, her hand tightening on Santana’s shoulder as her voice dropped fiercely.

“You saw what’s out there, Santana. Don’t be stupid. If we take enough time to look for a shovel, then actually try to find somewhere we can dig, drag their bodies out there, and bury them, do you know how long that will take? Maybe hours! Do you really think we can both fend off dozens of people who want to rip out our throats for hours, just because you want to have a traditional send off for people that don’t even know that you’re doing this for them in the first place, because they’re dead! It isn’t going to affect them in any way whatsoever if we have a funeral or don’t, Santana, because they’re dead! So get yourself together, because we don’t have any damn time to be emotional and weak, and help me!”

She was using the bitch in charge voice that Santana was accustomed to, the Quinn Fabray tone of steel that she had never been able to buck against successfully in the past, as much as she had tried. Even now, as angry and upset as she was, Santana knew, despite her efforts to retort, that almost definitely, if she was using that voice, Quinn was going to end up getting her way.

“Don’t you dare call me stupid and emotional and weak because I actually give a shit that people I love are dead! Just because I have a fucking soul, because I actually give a shit when my mother dies, because I actually care that they get what they deserve, some people actually can’t look their best friend in the eye and take a fucking weapon and-“

“There she is,” Quinn cut her off, not letting her finish the sentence, even though the understanding of what she had been about to say burned in her gaze, and Santana noticed her swallow again before hardening her expression. “That’s the Santana Lopez we need right now. You can do and feel and say whatever you want when we’re finished, but right now, we need to get them outside to save our own lives and you know it. Come on, Santana. Help me.”

It was amazing that even now, there was a part of Santana that was still resistant to doing anything that would make her look weak to Quinn Fabray. High school habits die hard, and it was maybe more for this reason than the logic of Quinn’s argument that caused her to slowly come forward as Quinn had directed, coming back to her mother’s sheet-covered body.

Quinn didn’t smile or give her blatant encouragement or approval for her response, but she did soften her tone when she spoke to Santana again. “I’ll get her shoulders, you get her legs. We’re just going to put her down in the front yard, and then we’ll get Brittany. Hopefully they’ll still be there later when everything has died down, and we can bury them just like they deserve. But we need to do this now. Ready?”

No, Santana wasn’t, and never would be. But she nevertheless reached forward and gingerly took hold of her mother’s covered legs, helping Quinn to lift.

 

Her mother was not heavy, but nevertheless, it was incredibly difficult for Santana to assist Quinn in carrying her body towards the doorway and out the front door of Quinn’s home. For one thing, neither of them wanted to bring Maribel’s body close enough to them to make the carrying of her weight easier. This would mean getting her blood on them, and worse, it would be fuller, more solid contact with her, making it harder to distance themselves from the fact that it was a dead woman they were holding in their arms. It was difficult enough for Santana to keep hold of just her ankles, when she could feel that her mother’s skin was already growing cool beneath the sheet, when she could see the spatters of blood stained through it and knew that it came from her mother. She couldn’t look at Quinn, in front of her, struggling to keep Maribel’s shoulders up high enough to transport her without having to get closer to her body, and it took all her concentration not to think of her mother’s face beneath the sheet, of her poor torn skin, and to know that she would get no gentle attention or reparation in her death. Not only would she receive no burial, she would receive no makeup or assistance from a mortician to help make her look presentable enough that Santana and her family- what was left of her family- could come to see her and say goodbye. 

She would never really get a chance to look at her mother, to hold her hand and kiss her face, and tell her goodbye.

Thinking of this, Santana almost tripped, her hold of Maribel’s ankles dipping, and Quinn had to overcompensate, struggling to hold her up. Briefly the girls’ eyes met, and Santana thought that she would say something terse or cutting. Instead, a brief flicker of feeling came over her eyes, and then she dropped them, resuming her careful steps.

They had to angle themselves awkwardly, with Quinn bracing her shoulder to open the door. As soon as they did, it was like another world opening itself up to them, one even more terrible than they had experienced in the private space of Quinn’s home. Outside the girls could hear people’s screams, the screeching of tires and the wailing of sirens, and even in Quinn’s normally sedate neighborhood, there was panic and confusion and noise all around them. Santana could see a few bodies out in the lawns, the remains of what she supposed must be Quinn’s mother in the middle of the street, and no one even seemed to notice or pay it mind. And this was the outside world that they were abandoning her mother’s and Brittany’s bodies out into…a world where people would rush past them without even caring they existed at all?

She almost tripped again as she and Quinn made their way down the front steps of Quinn’s porch, and when they laid Maribel’s wrapped body down in the grass, Santana took extra care to make sure her legs were straight and her spine was not twisted. It made no sense, maybe, to worry if she looked natural or comfortable when she clearly was not able to feel the difference, but Santana wanted it nonetheless. It was the only thing she could do for her then, and she damn well would.

As they made their way back into the house to get Brittany as well, a particularly loud scream made her jump, her hands automatically flying out to grab hold of Quinn and pull her close against her. As upset and angry as she was, she didn’t want to let the other girl get too far away from her, and she was not sorry when Quinn’s fingers twined with hers and squeezed tight, not letting go until the door was safely shut behind them again.

“Just Brittany now,” Quinn breathed, dropping her hand and giving it a slight shake once they were back inside. Santana realized dimly that she had probably hurt her with her grip on it, yet she had said nothing. “We need to hurry. I’m not sure how long it takes to…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but then, she didn’t have to. It was pretty obvious what she was implying. 

If it had been hard for Santana to help Quinn with her mother, it was nearly impossible to make herself help her with Brittany. The girl’s body was larger and heavier, for one thing, and Santana had to keep an even firmer grip. It was impossible to distract herself from the fact that this could very well be the last time she would ever see Brittany again, the last time that she would ever touch her, and by the time they had manipulated her out of the door and set her on the grass beside Maribel, Santana’s chest was heaving with barely suppressed sobs, and she felt moments away from uncontrollable screams.

When she lingered, gazing down at their bodies, she felt Quinn’s hand take hold of her elbow, gently tugging her back up the porch steps and into the house. As she closed the door behind them, then locked it, Santana stood motionless, physically present with the other girl, but mentally and emotionally remaining behind in the grass with the other women’s bodies. 

She would have expected Quinn to start barricading all possible entrances, as she had earlier laid out, but the blonde too seemed to be disturbed by what they had just done, albeit less outwardly emotional. She bit her lip, her body angled towards Santana, and didn’t move right away from the door, nor pull Santana back from it. After a few moments of silence, broken only by Santana’s slightly labored breaths, she cleared her throat, addressing her uncertainly.

“San…maybe it would help if I prayed for them…I know we can’t have a funeral right now, so-“

Santana’s head snapped up, her feelings now provided with a viable target, and she shook her head at her hard, her voice loud and tight with aggressive intensity. “Don’t you fucking dare, Quinn Fabray. Don’t even think about trying to make this fucking okay with a fucking prayer to GOD, like he can make this better, like everything is going to be okay! If he even exists then he LET this happen, don’t you dare pray to a God that let them die!”

It wasn’t until she voiced it that she realized she believed every word she was saying. For all of her life, Santana had been raised Catholic; she had undergone confirmation and been baptized, and she did believe, albeit lackadaisically and without great enthusiasm or interest, in the generalities of her faith. That didn’t mean she saw fit to obey all its rules, but believing in God and Jesus and the bigger issues of Christianity, if perhaps not Catholicism, hadn’t been something she had thought about critically enough to really question.

But with this happening…her papi, her mami, and Brittany, everything in the world as she knew it destroyed…it couldn’t be true. No loving, all powerful God that Santana wanted to know about or believe in could do this to her and the people she loved. She didn’t care what Quinn believed or wanted to believe, or what weak comfort she might be able to eke out of a continued adherence to her faith. Any faith that Santana herself had had was now gone, because if there really was a God, then that meant that Santana hated him for letting this happen.

She watched Quinn run a hand through her hair, feeling no better that it was shaking a little bit, as she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, not in exasperation, but because she seemed to be struggling to come up with a response. The other girl’s voice wasn’t quite steady as she finally said to her, “Santana…they’re…they’re not in pain anymore…it’s…it’s bad, but if you try to think about them in heaven, maybe they can see us and hear us, maybe they can watch out for us-“

For Santana, this was the final straw. She had barely been keeping herself together up until this point, and Quinn’s comment made it impossible to even continue to try. Some part of her knew logically that there was nothing, given the circumstances, that Quinn could say to her that would be the correct and needed words. There were no words that could change the situation or make things better. There were no words that would comfort Santana or make her feel like things would be okay, because noting barring this all turning out to be a terrible dream could ever make any of this even remotely okay. She knew that Quinn was doing what she thought was right, trying to help her in a way that perhaps Quinn herself would get comfort from, but the fact that she was even trying only infuriated Santana further. How dare she try to comfort her with such clichéd, condescending words? How dare she talk to her like it was all right for Brittany and her mother to be gone, like maybe they were okay with it, when less than thirty minutes ago they had both been breathing and moving and alive, when no one else in all of this world would ever have the thoughts and memories and characteristics that they had had? No one would ever be able to dance just like Brittany or sing just like her mami or make her melt with a touch like Brittany or fix her hair like her mami, no one would ever make food just like her mother or remember the original bedtime stories her mother had told her as a child. No one would ever talk about Lord Tubbington like Brittany had or know anything at all about the very first time that Santana ever realized just how amazing sex could be, let alone how to make her scream and shudder, helpless with pleasure. No one would ever be either of them, ever, they were gone, always, and no one would ever love her exactly like her mother and Brittany had loved her too. All of this was gone now, and for Quinn to stand there and talk to her about them being in HEAVEN, to talk about them like there was even a possibility of them being content with having all of this taken away, sent such a sharp wave of rage through her veins that she didn’t take even a moment to think through her response.

“STOP FUCKING TALKING! How the fuck can you say that, how the fuck can you THINK that it will be okay?!” she nearly screeched, turning on Quinn with such ferocity that the normally stoic girl blinked, actually reeling back away from her slightly, though maybe that was more to avoid the spittle flying out of Santana’s mouth than because she was actually frightened of her. “How the fuck can you talk about HEAVEN, how can you talk about them wearing white robes and floating on fluffy white clouds playing the fucking HARP, looking down on us like that’s okay, like they wouldn’t fucking MIND because that’s what the fuck everyone is supposed to want when they’re dead?! Do you realize how much they would HATE heaven, if it even exists?! Brittany is afraid of harps and Mami hated heights! Brittany liked music she could DANCE to, how do you dance on a cloud to harp music?! Mami liked salsa, how is she going to hear Latina music in heaven?! You think them floating around forever, not being able to do anything they actually like is good, you think that them not being here with me when they loved me best is okay, nothing is better or okay, people are fucking eating people, Quinn! People are going crazy, everyone is a monster, everyone is FUCKED UP, everyone is DYING and you’re going to stand there and talk to me about them all being better off because they go to some horrible nonexistent God in heaven?! Just shut up, SHUT UP!”

Her hand shot out then and on impulse that had almost become an expectation between them, an undercurrent of possibility always just below surface, Santana slapped Quinn, open handed, across the face. She saw Quinn’s pale cheek grow red, and her own palm stung with the force of the hit, and yet, for the first time that she could recall, Quinn didn’t hit her back. Instead the blonde stood there, blinking, her entire face slowly reddening to match her cheek, and after a slow breath in, simply turned back towards the house, addressing Santana without looking over her shoulder.

“We should get back inside. Someone probably heard you.”

She started to walk back towards the front door, not looking back at Santana; either she expected Santana would follow, or she didn’t care, in that moment, whether she did or not. For a few seconds Santana considered staying where she was, with her mother and her Brittany at her feet, refusing to leave until she was made to. But in the end, another shrill shriek, much too close for her comfort, made her lurch after Quinn, her heart pounding, as self preservation won out over self destruction.


	6. Chapter 6

Quinn still said nothing to her as Santana caught up to her, staying on her heels yet not quite touching as they re-entered her house. She watched as Quinn locked the door, then dragged a nearby small table in front of it, not bothering to remove the decorative pieces off of it first. Quinn still didn’t speak of the slap, or hardly look towards Santana’s face. She just continued to walk through the house, her shoulders set very tensely, checking windows and doors and making sure to bolt, lock, and block off all of them however possible. She didn’t ask for Santana to help, nor did Santana offer. She continued to behave as though Santana wasn’t following her, room to room, staying close enough that on a few occasions Quinn almost tread backwards over her when she turned too quickly. And even then Quinn said nothing, simply sidestepping her and continuing on with her task.

If it was her intention to give Santana time to think about her behavior towards her and start to regret it, it was working pretty well. The longer Santana watched her, the more uncomfortable she grew. She wasn’t about to apologize- definitely she wasn’t that regretful, with Quinn, in her opinion, having committed the more considerable offenses by far- but she did feel uneasy enough that by the time they reached the top floor, she started to silently assist Quinn in checking the windows, though she still remained in the same room with her, not daring to let her disappear out of her sight. She had seen what had happened to her mother, to Brittany, to Judy Fabray, the moment they took their eyes off of them. Even as upset as she was with Quinn, it wasn’t even a consideration that she could take any chances of letting it happen to her too.

Eventually they had finished, and as Quinn made her way back downstairs, Santana followed, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, her eyes trained on Quinn’s back. When they were back in the hallway, Quinn at last turned to her, looking her up and down with an expression that showed weariness more than any other emotion. Still, she didn’t yell at Santana, or say anything cutting at all. In fact, her voice was soft when she addressed her, matter of fact.

“You should shower.”

Santana blinked, surprised that she was looking at her, let alone talking to her, and it took a few moments for her to process what Quinn had said. She frowned, tilting her head slightly as she squinted her eyes at her. In the time that she had followed Quinn through the house, helping her, her thoughts had seemed to slow and stretch out and away from her, not quite attached to her or related to her immediate surroundings at all, and she couldn’t in the moment quite understand why she was making this suggestion to her. 

“Why?” she asked, hearing the odd, almost stuporous quality to her voice, but not quite able to adapt it to a more normal tone. A part of her understood very well why she should be showering, why they both should be scrubbing their skin raw against not just the physical reality but the emotional reality of what was happening, but another part of her could barely respond to her name, let alone a direct suggestion of action.

“Because you have blood on your hands and clothes and in your hair,” Quinn told her, her voice still almost eerily calm, her expression giving away nothing of whatever emotions she might be feeling. It was the Fabray stoicism, back in place, and even in her current state Santana recognized it for what it was, only a mask. “It’s disgusting, and it’s not going to make you feel any better or think any more clearly. And if some of it gets into an opening in our skin, we don’t want to see what could happen. We both need to shower and change our clothes, and then we can think about what to do next.”

Santana hadn’t even thought about that, about blood on her skin being able to affect her or Quinn. She felt her face drain of color, and her knees went weak. Only by reaching back and touching the wall could she manage to take a deep breath and orient herself to her present. Her skin began to itch and crawl as though in response to Quinn’s words, and she began to fear the very substance still staining her skin and clothes. Did she have any cuts or scratches she had forgotten about? Had she put her fingers near her mouth or eyes or nose without thinking, and gotten traces of blood in those openings? What if she was about to change, right now, this very moment? Didn’t it mean something, if her heart was starting to race and her face and felt stiff and strange? Was the sharp nauseous feeling in her stomach meaning that she was about to start craving Quinn’s flesh?!

Still, despite her growing anxiety, her sudden and intense desire to remove every speck of blood from her and scrub her skin raw against any possibility of how it could affect her, Santana nevertheless balked too at the idea of showering, even so. Because no matter how frightened she was of what might happen to her, of what she might become, she didn’t want to become it alone. 

And leaving Quinn by herself, even for the time it would take to shower? What if something happened to her? What if someone broke into the house and went after her, where Santana couldn’t see and help her? What if Quinn herself changed, when Santana couldn’t see and be ready, and she couldn’t stop her from coming after her? What if Quinn decided she had enough and left the house without her, and Santana really was alone? 

This was the thought that panicked her more than all the rest of them. Quinn couldn’t leave her. She couldn’t, Santana couldn’t let her. What if her telling Santana to take a shower was her way of getting her out of her sight, so she could sneak off without her? What if she was so mad at her for yelling at her and hitting her that she wasn’t even bothering to fight back, she was going to take off and leave her to fend for herself alone?

Santana’s chest compressed, and she shook her head hard, her words coming out fast, nearly frantic as she refused again. “No. No, I don’t want to shower. No, I’m staying right here with you.”

For a moment Quinn watched her, her brow furrowed. She opened her mouth, then stopped, perhaps seeing something that made her change the course of whatever words stood on the tip of her tongue. Something subtle changed in the surface of her gaze, and her mouth closed, pressing together into a thin line before she spoke again, her words soft.

“Santana, I’ll go with you. I’ll sit on the toilet seat and make sure nothing comes in. You can do the same for when I shower. That’s what we’ll do for each other now…watch each other’s back.”

Santana doesn’t like the change in her voice, in her tone. She doesn’t like that any lecture of snapping that Quinn had planned on giving her had been stopped and changed to a gentle, almost soothing tone. Quinn Fabray was not a natural caregiver, least of all to the girl who had fought and competed with her for the top of the social ladder from the moment they first laid eyes one each other. For Quinn to treat her so carefully, she must think Santana to be very fragile or frightened, too much so for her to even try to push her.

That was not the image she wanted Quinn to have of her, even in the worst of circumstances, even when her entire world was destroyed. And yet, Santana knew that it wasn’t far off the mark. There was a very thin line between her anger and total despair, and as much as she didn’t want the comforting gentle treatment from Quinn, as much as she didn’t want her to look at her or treat her as delicate or as a child, a part of her needed this so badly then that she couldn’t even buck against it very hard. Not even from Quinn. Not even from the girl who had ended Brittany’s life.

She kept her hands held out and slightly away from her, not daring to touch herself or anything around her then for fear of the blood infecting herself or Quinn. Quinn didn’t try to touch her either. She walked slightly ahead of Santana, occasionally glancing back as though to be sure Santana was coming too, as she lead the way to her own bathroom. It was attached to her bedroom, the bathroom that Santana always used when she stayed over, and fairly large in space. It went without saying that they would be avoiding the bathroom that Quinn had had to trap her mother in, even though no violence had occurred within it. 

As Quinn closed the door to the bathroom, moving to sit on the toilet, she didn’t avert her eyes away from Santana, but continued to regard her steadily. Santana was used to undressing in front of her, between Cheerios and sleepovers, and of course, there had been that one night on Valentine’s day…had that really been over nine months ago? Still, with Quinn’s eyes on her so blatantly, the other girl not even pretending to give her a semblance of privacy, Santana balked again, her chin jerking up defensively as she stayed clothed, arms crossed over her chest.

“Why the hell are you looking at me like that? I can get dressed without you making sure I remember to take off my panties too, you know.”

“I want to make sure you’re not hurt,” Quinn said calmly, though there was a bit of an edge coming into her tone. “That you really weren’t scratched or bitten. Because if you were, we have a problem. I’m pretty sure that’s why your mother and Brittany changed, and probably my mother too. I didn’t see a scratch or bite on her, but I didn’t know that I needed to look at the time, and I was a little distracted by the fact that she was trying to kill me.”

“I told you I wasn’t scratched or bitten, can’t you take me at my word without staring at me like a fucking creeper?” Santana retorted, but Quinn still didn’t rise entirely to the bait.

“I think you’ll have to admit that it makes perfect sense given the circumstances that I’d prefer direct evidence.”

“You’re unbelievable,” Santana shook her head, giving a short, broken laugh that held no humor whatsoever. “Fucking unbelievable. Do you even give a shit what’s going on at all? How the hell can you sit there and be so damn calm when your mother is DEAD, when my mom is dead, when you took a fucking poker and-“

She stopped, finding her throat choking up even at the thought of finishing that sentence; she couldn’t make herself say it aloud, and the look on Quinn’s face stopped her from trying. Quinn’s face had become stone again, and her voice was hard as she responded.

“Because someone has to be, Santana. Because someone has to keep her head on straight if we’re going to survive, and obviously, it’s not going to be you. Now get in the shower, and don’t use up all the hot water because I need to shower too, and I highly doubt either of us feel like sharing at the moment.”

She was absolutely right about that. Santana didn’t want to be anywhere closer to Quinn than she had to be, let alone in a tight space. It was only because her throat was still too choked up to speak that she didn’t respond back to her. Instead, she started to strip off her clothes, swallowing hard from the way the clothing attempted to stick to her skin, and let them drop onto the floor at her feet. Her hands shook too badly at first to be able to turn the shower on, but eventually she managed and stepped inside, letting herself stand, motionless, beneath the water’s spray.

After several moments of letting the warm water beat over her back and shoulders and head, barely registering the feel of its pressure against her skin, Santana lifted her hands, half heartedly attempting to rub at the drying blood on her skin. She watched it flake off and begin to disappear down the drain, tinting the water red, and shuddered, desperately trying to push from her thoughts its connection to its source. 

 

But it was too late to be able to succeed. Santana was all too aware that it was Brittany’s blood she was watching, her mother’s blood, little pieces of their life source, contained in those flecks of red. The very substances that had kept the two women she loved most in the world alive was disappearing down the drain before her eyes, and it struck her that this was a terrible waste, that it was wrong and cruel. They should be preserving this somehow, preserving every last bit of the women that remained, because it was leaving her fast, and she could never get it back. Everything that had made them real and alive and human, everything that had made them her mother and her Brittany, was literally going down the drain before her eyes, and she couldn’t make it stop. 

She would never have them again. She would never have her mami, she would never have her Brittany again. Ever. 

Santana scrubbed at her body frantically with her fingernails, not caring that she was scratching herself, in her desperation to get any remaining fragments of blood off herself, the pieces of the women that were no longer part of them at all. Even as she did this it occurred to her that she should be trying to hold onto it, that if she really wanted to make sure she had something left of them, she should never shower again, and now she was ruining it all. She couldn’t do anything right. She couldn’t do anything right at all, and that was the reason that they were gone now in the first place. Because she hadn’t been fast enough or smart enough or strong enough to protect them. She had failed to keep them safe.

Santana started to sniffle then, tears dripping down her face slowly at first, but then quickly building up speed until she could barely see at all through the cloud of tears blinding her vision. She put her face directly into the stream of water, trying to stifle it or wash it away from her entirely, but even the steady warm pressure of the water on her skin didn’t seem to take away from the intensity of emotion building up within her. Her chest began to compress tighter and tighter until she felt that she couldn’t breathe, and as she started to gulp for air, having to turn her face away from the water, a heavy tremor began to run through her limbs and up her spine. Sobs began to break forth from her throat, and her arms shook so badly that it seemed to Santana that the only thing in the world that could keep her from hurting so badly then was to strike out, to give herself some sort of physical pain and focus to distract from the pain she felt inside.

So Santana lashed out, beginning to hit the shower wall with both fists, kicking too at the tub’s sides with her feet. Of course, between her wild blows and the tub’s slick floor, she couldn’t manage this for long, and she slipped, falling on her ass on the shower’s floor and knocking her shoulder hard against the metal faucet on her way down. Still, this didn’t stop her from striking out, as she continued to hit and kick the sides of the shower from her now seated position, the sobs breaking out of her unevenly until her anguish had almost become a howling of her grief. Had she been able to think at all abstractly about the situation, she would have realized that she sounded like a toddler having a tantrum more than a nineteen year old girl at the end of her ability to emotionally handle her day, but even if she had, frankly, she wouldn’t have given a fuck.

This was too much. It was all just too much, so much more than she could take and accept, and so Santana sobbed and screamed and hit out at the shower’s walls, because what else could she do now but grieve?

She wasn’t sure when it was that Quinn got up from the closed lid of the toilet seat and pulled the shower curtain back, leaning over her and taking gentle hold of her wrists to keep her from hitting out anymore. She couldn’t focus on what Quinn was saying to her, but it was soft, gentle, empathetic rather than judgmental, and it was her tone rather than her words that eventually cut through. She didn’t know what Quinn was saying, but she was aware of the blond ignoring how the stream of water was soaking her clothes to her back and her hair to her scalp as she leaned over Santana, rubbing cold hands up and down her arms and over her shoulders in her effort to soothe.

 

It was with Quinn’s gentle direction, more gestures and light tugs than words of instruction, that Santana finally let herself be guided into leaning backward in the tub, her head against its edge as Quinn took over her bathing, using a warm washcloth to gently wash off her face, her neck, her shoulder, back, and arms. She wiped off only the parts of her breasts, shoulders, and legs that had any traces of blood residue on them, seeming to want to avoid too much intimacy in the treatment. Santana continued to cry, though more quietly and hopelessly than she had before, as Quinn washed her, her shoulders slumped, head hanging forward slightly as her tears dripped towards her chest. She let Quinn wash her hair, eyes closing, and as she felt Quinn’s fingers against her scalp, carefully massaging in the shampoo, she felt herself slowly start to relax, her tears beginning to ease and her breathing slowing down.

Quinn finished up with her in silence, rinsing her hair, and then finally took her hands away from her. Santana opened her eyes reluctantly, already missing her touch, and saw that Quinn was regarding her, her brow furrowed in thought.

“You’re clean…do you need a few more minutes, or can I have my turn now?”

It was typical Quinn. No discussion whatsoever about feelings or if she was okay, no asking what she could do for her or reassurance that she was all right. It was straight to the point of where to go next, their plan of action, and strange as that might seem, this was more comforting to Santana than any tender words could have been. 

Santana didn’t answer her. She simply stood, swaying slightly, and allowed Quinn to take hold of her arm to steady her. As she stepped out of the tub with some assistance from Quinn, taking the towel she offered her and wrapping it around herself, she didn’t bother to dry herself off properly. Instead, she sat on the toilet seat that Quinn had left vacant, the towel wrapped loosely around her, and let her hair drip down her back to the floor as Quinn began to remove her clothes and stepped into the vacated shower.

Normally, Santana would have taken the opportunity of Quinn stripping to look her over with some appreciation. She had an amazing ass, after all, and her boobs weren’t half bad either. But she had no interest whatsoever today. As Quinn turned the shower back on, beginning to wash herself, Santana was only aware that even the separation of an opague shower curtain between them seemed entirely too much, of how anxious she was for her to emerge again where she could see her. 

She couldn’t hear Quinn crying, or making any sort of noise at all, over the sound of the running water. As Santana sat, numb, beginning to shiver from the exposure of her wet skin to the air, it seemed to her a very long time before Quinn finally turned off the shower and stepped out, retrieving a towel for herself for both her body and to wrap her hair in. Only when she had taken care of this did she look over at Santana, frowning.

“You didn’t dry yourself,” she noted, slight frustration in her tone. “You’ll get sick, Santana. Come here.”

When Santana didn’t, she sighed, going to her instead, and took a fourth towel from its rack, beginning to use it to dry Santana’s arms and shoulders. She was again gentle, patting more than rubbing, and so Santana let her towel dry her hair too for a few minutes before she hung it back on the rack, reaching out a hand to help Santana to her feet. Santana took it, and when Quinn didn’t immediately let go when she was standing, she held on, letting her lead her back into Quinn’s bedroom.

Even once they were in the bedroom, Quinn was slow to drop Santana’s hand. Santana didn’t have the capability then of trying to delve into anyone else’s mental or emotional state but her own, but had she been able to, she might have reached the conclusion that despite her outer lack of reaction, Quinn was feeling pretty emotionally worn and strained by everything they had been through as well. Quinn kept hold of her hand all the way until she lead Santana to her dresser, and only when she began to open drawers and remove clothing for herself did she drop it. 

She chose a baggy t-shirt, sweat pants, and thick socks, laying them out as she towel dried, then combed out her hair. Without turning her head to look at Santana, she told her, “You can borrow whatever you want, San. Then we should watch the news to see if there’s anything new happening that we need to know. We can watch it in my bed, because if there’s nothing new to tell us what happened, or what we need to do next, then we need to sleep. It’s getting late.”

Santana registered her words but didn’t really respond to them. Instead she pulled out a pair of pajama bottoms, a tank top, and some of Quinn’s underwear, going for a pair of boi cut for the comfort factor without hardly looking at the design. In any normal circumstances, borrowing Quinn’s underwear would have given her plenty of joking material about rubbing up against Quinn’s privates or getting sexy, but she was in no mood at all for teasing. She simply dressed, not bothering with a bra, and when climbed up on her bed, settling back against the pillows with her remote in her hand, Santana sat, cross-legged and straight-backed, beside her, keeping a slight distance in between.

She expected Quinn to turn the TV on as soon as she was settled on the bed beside her. But instead, the other girl turned her body as well as her head towards her more fully, looking her directly in the eyes. She seemed to be measuring her before she spoke, her voice quiet and very serious.

“I’m sorry, Santana. I’m sorry for what’s happening, and what happened to your mother. I’m sorry for what happened to Brittany and…and…what I had to do. I wish I didn’t have to. I wish none of this was real, but it is. It is, and we have to do whatever it takes to get through this. What I need to know now is if I’m going to have you through it, no matter what happens or what we have to do. I need to know that I can count on you, no matter how pissed off you are or get, or what horrible things we have to see or do. Even if you hate me sometimes, or I hate you…I need to know that we can still count on each other. No matter what.”  
There was no escaping those hazel eyes, fixed so intently on hers. Santana wanted to look away from them, to back away from this commitment that Quinn was asking of her. How could she promise her this? How could she promise anyone anything, when she was hurting so badly and everything in the world was wrong? How could she promise to be with her no matter what happened or what Quinn did, when Quinn had killed the woman she loved, when she had forced Santana not to be there for her mother in the last moments of her death? 

And yet, how could she not? How could she let the only person left that she still loved go off on her own, without Santana even trying to help her stay safe? How could she leave Quinn, her best friend, possibly the only person in her life left that had ever really mattered?

A shuddering sigh escaped her before she could stop it, and Santana swallowed hard, thinning her lips. Slowly she nodded, her own words emerging as dry as a husk.

“Yeah. You have me. Through this. You have me.”

Quinn didn’t smile; there was really nothing left for them to smile about, not genuinely, not tonight. Instead, she gave a small nod, then reached to cover Santana’s hand briefly with hers. She didn’t squeeze, just touched her hand, before taking it back to herself and turning on the TV.


	7. Chapter 7

It didn’t take very long for them to determine that whatever it was that was going on, it definitely wasn’t only an isolated event occurring in Lima, Ohio. It seemed that nearly every channel was taken up with news reports, covering the same fleeing individuals, abandoned bodies, and roaming, murderous figures that Santana and Quinn had witnessed in their own neighborhoods. Reporters were unable to keep their voices calm as they rapidly described what they were viewing, and as Santana watched, her eyes growing wider and wider with what she was seeing, she found herself scooting closer to Quinn until their shoulders touched, both hands reaching to grip Quinn’s arm and squeeze hard enough that it was probably causing the other girl pain. Still, she didn’t react to Santana’s grip. If anything, she seemed to be pressing her own shoulder closer against Santana’s too, her eyes almost as large as the Latina’s as she too watched the screen.

When a broadcast of the president came on, Santana sat up straighter, releasing Quinn’s arm and reaching instead for her hand as her heart thudded loudly in her chest, anticipation, excitement, and dread stirring in her veins. Surely he would tell them what was happening and what to do. But instead, he simply gave words of calming and warning, harried-looking as he was, reassuring them all that the causes of the outbreak were being worked on identifying as well as a way to end it and contain those affected to hopefully treat. He announced that all businesses and schools were to be closed until this could be accomplished, and everyone was advised to stay in their homes with the doors locked and bolted until an announcement of safety had been given. 

As his face faded from the program and it returned to scans of reporters and scenes on the street, Santana’s nails again dug into Quinn’s skin, and she shrunk into her side, almost hiding her face in Quinn’s shoulder until Quinn abruptly reached for the remote and turned the TV off. When Santana lifted her face, looking at her quizzically, Quinn shrugged, shaking her head at her.

“We heard all the information they have. That’s scaring you to keep watching it and that won’t help us stay calm.”

“It’s scaring me to fucking exist right now, watching TV isn’t going to make it any worse,” Santana argued, even as she eased up slightly on her hold of Quinn. “Turn it back on, Quinn, I want to see what’s going on.”

“No. I can feel your heart against my arm, it’s practically ripping out of your chest,” Quinn retorted, to Santana’s great irritation. She pulled back from her, crossing her arms over her chest as though to disguise what Quinn had accused her of.

“Well some of us actually have feelings about this, excuse me for not functioning like a fucking cyborg! Turn it back on, Quinn!”

“No,” Quinn said flatly, turning her face slightly away from her, and Santana raised her voice, reaching across her to take the remote herself.

“Quinn, turn it ON!”

“No!” Quinn snapped, and when she turned her head back towards Santana, Santana saw, to her own shock, that her jaw was shaking, that there were tears standing brightly in her eyes.

Only then did it occur to her that it was Quinn, not her, who was scared, that it was Quinn who was having the great difficulty watching the news. When Quinn’s head jerked back to regard the wall, not letting her face into Santana’s view, Santana took a slow breath in, then let it go. 

“Okay…maybe you’re right. Maybe we should just go to sleep.”

She saw Quinn nod slightly, though she still didn’t’ face her. Neither girl had brushed her teeth, but this didn’t bother Santana then. She simply lay down, on her back, as Quinn got out of bed and walked across the room to turn out the light. As soon as the darkness enveloped them, though, Santana couldn’t help but gasp, fear immediately gripping her heart, and just as quickly as she had flicked the lights off, Quinn put them back on, not even having to ask what was wrong. Maybe she too had been uneasy by the room’s sudden darkness. It seemed to Santana a long time before Quinn had rejoined her in the bed, her body, alone there, entirely too vulnerable and exposed, and she felt slightly better when Quinn lay down beside her, her shoulder touching slightly.

They were silent for a few moments, only the slightly labored sound of their breaths breaking the quiet, and then Quinn spoke, clearly trying to sound comforting even as she kept her voice hushed.

“Well…they said they’re working on it…we have a lot of scientists and doctors and if they’re all on it together, and everyone stays quarantined in their homes like they asked us to, they should figure it out fast. And maybe it’s only temporary. Maybe the infected ones will be okay tomorrow, or the next day.”

Santana’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and she heaved a sigh, speaking with obvious annoyance as she shifted to face Quinn in the bed. “Quinn. Really, you don’t have to try to make things sound like they’re going to be okay. In fact, I beg you to stop, because you suck at it, and it’s a lie.”

“You don’t know that,” Quinn argued, although her tone was less than convincing even to her own ears. “You heard the president, they’re trying to pinpoint the causes and find something to stop all of this-“

“Yeah, TRYING, didn’t say they’d done it, did they?”

“They said they were trying. And anyway, Santana, we can’t just fall apart and be miserable or we won’t function,” Quinn told her, pulling the covers up further towards her chin. “We have to tell ourselves something to try to get through the day, even if it does turn out to be a lie.”

“I don’t want to get through the day,” Santana said tightly, her fingers gripping the sheet so tightly it was on the border of tearing. “I don’t want to feel better, and I don’t want to tell myself anything but the fucking truth. You shouldn’t want to either. It’s been like two hours, Quinn, two fucking hours since we watched three people die.” Her voice was harsh, but it caught on the word “die” until she hardened her expression and her tone again, as though to make up for this lapse. “Sorry if I didn’t inherit your robot genes to have no feelings about that whatsoever.

Quinn sat up then, throwing the sheets off herself as she faced Santana fully, her voice nearly a hiss as she leaned close enough to her that Santana felt a fleck of her spittle against her cheek. Her eyes narrowed almost to slits, and every part of her bristled rage. Santana braced herself for a slap that never came, and its lacking was more surprising than anything.

“Fuck you, Santana Lopez. I saved your life and you know it. You want to be with them so badly, go out there and lay down beside them, see what happens. You want to see what it feels like to have your skin ripped off your bones, go for it, get yourself an adventure!”

It was true, what she was saying. Quinn had saved her life….but did she have to do it in quite the way that she had?

Santana swallowed hard, trying not to think about the bodies of the women she had loved, lying beneath the sheets Quinn had wrapped them in. Her voice was hoarser than she would have liked as she responded with some difficulty. 

“You didn’t have to do it the way you did. We could have saved them…we could have kept them alive. We could have locked them in a room, or…or tied them up, or…”

“It wouldn’t matter what we did, Santana, we couldn’t change them back.” Quinn’s voice was firm, if not loud, her eyes bearing into Santana’s until the other girl wanted to look away, to squirm beneath their steady gaze. “They were changed. They were changed, and they wouldn’t have stopped trying to hurt us until they succeeded, and you know that. They would still be trying to get us right this minute. We could never sleep or relax or do anything but fight for as long as they were still in here with us.”

 

“You don’t know that!” Santana shot back at her, wanting to believe more than truly believing in her own words. “You don’t know that, Quinn Fabray! You just took the easy way out, you didn’t want to have to try something that would be more effort, you don’t know!”

 

Santana saw Quinn’s hand twitch as though with a strong urge to hit out at her, but it dropped back down to her thigh. She watched as Quinn’s lips quivered, tears filling her eyes, then overflowing down her cheeks, and her voice emerged in a choked whisper.

“You think that was the EASY way? You think it was EASY for me to look into the eyes of one of my best friends and…you think it was EASY to know that my other best friend is going to hate me for the rest of our lives, you think it’s easy I’m going to have to live the rest of my fucked up life knowing that I took away the love of your life and you’re always going to hate me for it?” 

The tears became full on sobs, and Quinn bolted out of bed and into her bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her and clicking the lock in place. Santana too sat up, genuinely startled by the intensity of her response. She had not realized, despite the momentary flickers of feeling that Quinn had shown, that she too was upset, that she truly was bothered by what they had seen, by what she herself had done. Quinn was difficult to read in the best of times, and in situations of intense conflict, she had a tendency to shut off emotion to the point that even Santana sometimes couldn’t tell if it existed in her. Conflicted feelings of guilt, slight vindication, and anxiety at her sudden solitude in the bedroom warred within Santana at once, and she sighed, sliding her feet out of bed and walking to the closed bathroom door. 

She had gone too far; she knew that now. And it was true that she had promised Quinn she would have her back. 

Kneeling beside the door, she knocked lightly, taking a deep breath and trying to gentle her voice. “Quinn…okay, I’m sorry. Open up for me…please?”

She could hear Quinn’s sniffling on the other side of the door, and the blonde responded in a voice choked with tears, clearly trying to sound hard without at all being successful.

“Go away, Santana, just go away. If you hate me so damn much just go. Do it by yourself, do everything alone, if that’s what you want, just go.”

“Hey, that isn’t what I want,” Santana told her, realizing even as she said it and heard the sincerity in her own tone that this was true. “I don’t want to go. Or you to go. Look, I said you had me, didn’t I? And you do. So…open the door, okay?”

“I can’t do this,” Quinn was still sobbing. Her voice sounded muffled by more than the door; maybe she had her hands over her face, or had hidden her face in a towel. “I can’t. I can’t do this, Santana, not if you keep t-talking about it, not if you k-keep telling me what I did. I know what I did, Santana, I know, I know, okay, I know, so stop throwing it back in my face when I know!”

Her voice broke again, and for a few moments Santana just heard her uneven, sniffling breaths before she was able to speak again, slightly calmer than before. “I know what I did. I’m always going to know. I just…please, I can’t talk about it with you anymore. I can’t. I know you hate me for it, but I can’t, Santana, I can’t.”

Santana processed this, her hand splayed flat against the door. She could hear her own heartbeat, pounding almost in rhythm with Quinn’s loud breaths, and she was forced to acknowledge to herself that Quinn had a point. As hurt and angry and upset as she was, she still needed Quinn, and Quinn would need her too. 

“Okay,” she said finally, swallowing hard, her voice dropping. “Okay, Quinn. Just…will you please let me in?”

When Quinn didn’t respond, Santana started to panic, her heart beating faster and faster until she was sure that it was about to jump right out of her chest. Why wasn’t she answering her? Couldn’t she talk anymore? Was there something in the bathroom she hadn’t seen that had hurt her? Was she starting to change?

She started to pound on the bathroom door, calling Quinn’s name with more than a little anxiety in her tone, and when the door opened, she nearly fell over on top of Quinn, giving a shriek in response to this unexpected movement. “Why didn’t you answer me?! You said we had to stick together, you can’t go lock yourself in a room and not answer me if we’re sticking together!”

“I meant sticking together emotionally, Santana, not literally gluing yourself to my ass,” Quinn griped, furtively wiping at the tearstains on her face with the palms of her hands. Santana saw as she backed away from her slightly that her nose and eyes were red, little wisps of hair sticking out from around her face, and she took another breath, seeming to be still calming herself. “We’re allowed to have a minute or two of privacy every now and then.”

“No we’re not,” Santana objected, shaking her head. “Not anymore. Not the way it is right now. You said stick together and that’s what we have to do. We’re not safe if we don’t, Quinn, we have to be right there with each other!” 

She knew that it was her anxiety more than any real logical reason that she needed to be able to see Quinn then, but she wasn’t about to spell that out to her. And Quinn still wasn’t being very cooperative.

“Thirty seconds ago you didn’t want anything to do with me and now you can’t let me sit on the opposite side of a door from you?” she scoffed, wiping at her cheeks again and taking a sniffling breath. “Leave me alone, Santana, it’s what you wanted anyway.”

Looking at her, Santana took in Quinn’s quivering lips, her still teary eyes, and sighed, finding herself softening, if reluctantly. Slowly she moved forward, standing close, without quite touching, as she mumbled her response to her.

“It’s not what I want. Look, Q, you know how much I suck at…this,” she said, giving her a helpless gesture with both hands that even she wasn’t sure was attempting to refer to. “Can’t you just come back to bed with me and we’ll forget we ever said shit?”

Quinn sighed too, almost in the exact rhythm and volume as Santana had. Her head bowed forward, one hand coming up to cover her face, and she shook her head slightly, her voice muffled by her hand when she finally replied.

“I can’t do this, Santana, I can’t take this, not today, not from you. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say but I’m sorry, but I had to do it…I didn’t want to but I had to. I had to. So stop…just…just stop throwing it in my face. Stop.”

Her voice was softer, more choked and vulnerable than Santana would have thought possible, coming from Quinn Fabray. She gave several more shuddering breaths before she lowered her hand, lifting her face to look back at Santana. Santana bit her lip, regarding her as her eyebrows knit together, her head a mass of confused, tangled thoughts that she couldn’t begin to sort through. It was the strange, unaccustomed need in Quinn’s eyes that finally got to her, and she gave another slow sigh as her head inclined in a slight nod.

“I…I know,” she admitted, her own words barely more than a whisper. She blinked several times, feeling tears burn behind her eyes and trying hard not to let them fall as her gaze dropped down, focusing on her feet. Another breath escaped her, and she swallowed hard as she said to Quinn, “I just…I don’t know if we can do this. I don’t know if I can do this…how…how the fuck do I wake up each day, how do I just keep on breathing, when they aren’t here too?”

She found herself taking a step closer to Quinn, their arms almost touching now, and when the girl responded, she thought she could tell that Quinn was shifting closer to her too.

“You…I guess you just have to. You just keep breathing, and doing everything you have to, to stay alive. You put one foot in front of the other and you just…you just do.”

She made that sound so easy. Like all she had to do was walk around and continue her life, and it wouldn’t be a big deal at all. Like she could get through the days with constant memories of Brittany, of her mother, and it wouldn’t make her want to curl up in a ball and cry until she couldn’t speak, or lash out and hit things until she couldn’t move and blood streamed down her fists. It didn’t seem possible, not without Brittany or her mother there to help her, to encourage and comfort her, and Santana shook her head, just a little at first, but then harder, more vehemently.

“I can’t. It’s not possible…it isn’t possible, Quinn. I don’t think I can do it.”

Her breathing was already coming faster, unwanted thoughts and memories pressing into her mind, taking up every bit of energy she had to spare and more. Santana’s head dropped down, tears again pressing hotly against her eyes as one shoulder came into contact with Quinn’s and stayed, the slight physical contact seeming to help, ever so slightly. Quinn didn’t move away. She could feel her eyes on her, hear her voice close to her ear as Quinn leaned in, firmer now in her tone.

“You will. You have to. There’s not another option. We’re here, we’ve survived, and we have to make sure that goes on.”

She seemed to have banished her tears, taking on again the stoic face that Santana was more accustomed to. For a few moments a dark thought crept into Santana’s consciousness as she wondered whether Quinn was really right at all. There was another option…it wasn’t necessary, per se, for her to survive, not if she decided she didn’t want to. Was it really worth it, to go on without her mother, without her Brittany? Did she really even want to try? 

But even as she was beginning to ponder this, letting the possibility settle over her mind, Quinn’s voice drew her out of her musing, snapping her attention back into a much more comfortable realm of thought.

“We aren’t the only ones out here, I’m sure…there has to be others. I wonder who else is tucked away, or escaped away, that we know.” She paused, then asked aloud, seemingly to herself more than to Santana, “I wonder if Rachel is still alive…it’s hard to predict, with her.”

 

Even giving the current situation, there was no way Santana Lopez could let that comment go. She snorted, though somewhat more weakly than usual, as she turned to Quinn, shaking her head and giving her a faint smirk.  
“Are you serious? The hobbit probably scuttled underground for cover the moment her hairy little ears perked up to this shit. You know she couldn’t take anyone on in a fight, so that’s her only shot of survival. I knew you had a thing for her, Q, figures she’d be the first person you’d think about in a crisis.”

“I do not have a THING for her,” Quinn said immediately and with great defensiveness, as Santana had known she would. “Don’t be stupid. I just…I’m just wondering about the others. In Glee…you know, if they…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but Santana didn’t need her to. Until this point she had managed not to focus on anyone in her thoughts outside of herself, Quinn, Brittany, and her mother; that had been more than enough to try to process. But now that Quinn had opened the door to this line of thought, Santana flinched, unconsciously pressing her shoulder more fully against her as she shook her head, trying to block out the faces of their friends from entering their thoughts. She didn’t want to play the game of guess who survived, not now, not ever. She didn’t want to remember they existed, if that meant she would have to worry about them. 

Her weight was almost fully leaning into Quinn’s now, and when Quinn shifted to accommodate her, a hand awkwardly moving to touch her hip, Santana shook her head at her, though she didn’t move away.

“Stop talking about them,” she told her, so quietly she barely heard herself, but Quinn seemed to understand. 

“Okay…” she said softly, and the back of her hand brushed Santana’s, as though in apology. She didn’t lace her fingers with the other girl’s, and Santana didn’t offer, but it was close. “What should we talk about then?”

“We’re standing in your fucking bathroom, five minutes ago you were bawling, a minute before that we were fighting, and it’s got to be past one am,” Santana reminded her with some incredulity, shaking her head. “Why do we have to talk about anything? Anyway, since when does Quinn Fabray want to TALK when shit’s going down instead of repress and deny and snap?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to talk about THIS,” Quinn retorted, knocking her shoulder against Santana’s with some irritation scrunching up her nose. “But it beats standing here with you clinging to me and listening to you breathing like a panting dog.”

“Hey, fuck you, I don’t CLING,” Santana knocked her shoulder against her again, a little harder this time, and when Quinn’s lips curved into a small but genuine smile, she too relaxed a little bit, as the blonde replied in a somewhat sarcastic, yet not unaffectionate tone.

“Right…you just lean heavily and cuddle.”

“I don’t cuddle,” Santana muttered, even as her throat choked up and her eyes dropped away. The word cuddle invoked images of Brittany, draping her long body over hers, the warmth and security of her arms around her, holding her close. It made her think too of her mother, holding her in her lap and rocking her as a young child, cradling her head in her lap and stroking her hair as she grew older, and she pressed more and more closely against Quinn without quite realizing she was doing it, again fighting the never quite absent threat of tears.

After a few moments she was aware of Quinn’s arm, with some awkwardness and hesitation in the gesture, moving to wrap around her shoulders, drawing her in a little closer. Santana let her head drop against the other girl’s shoulder, closing her eyes, and for several moments they were silent, only the sound of Santana’s uneven breaths and Quinn’s quick heartbeats breaking the silence. Slowly Quinn’s arm tightened around her, Santana curled herself more heavily against her side, and for almost a minute or two, there was a stillness between them that could almost be considered peace, certainly something near a truce, at least for that moment.

Of course, it couldn’t last long, and Santana spoke up, without removing her head from Quinn’s shoulder, eventually.

“Why are we standing here completely awkwardly when there’s a bed ten feet away?”

She heard Quinn snort faintly, and the blonde pulled back from her, one arm still loosely wrapped around her shoulders as she replied with nothing but affection in her tone, despite the words.

“All right, if you can turn off bitch mode for the rest of the night, or at least the next hour, I’ll come back to bed.” 

“Wanky,” Santana responded automatically, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Don’t count on it. Bitch is what I do. I’m never a bitch, I’m THE bitch.”

“You wish, Lopez,” Quinn gave her a little push, but there was definitely a smile in her voice this time, even as tired as she sounded. “Still head bitch in charge here. Always. Get your ass in bed and sleep.”


	8. Chapter 8

They didn't turn the light off as they got back into Quinn's bed together; it wasn't even a question of attempting to do so. Santana lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling, and didn't even try to close her eyes. As physically, mentally, and emotionally tired as she was, she knew that she would never be able to shut off her thoughts enough to sleep.

She lay there, very aware of Quinn, curled into a ball and facing away from her beside her. They were not touching, but she could hear the other girl's every breath and small movement beside her. It seemed to her an eternity of lying beside her, her skin itching with her sudden and strong desire to move, to get up and pace the entire house until she could feel calm and tired enough to finally be able to fully rest.

It dawned on Santana then that this would be the absolute perfect time for the…violent people…to attack. Now that they had weeded out a lot of the "normal" people already, the ones who had survived were so tired and upset and in shock they were probably sleeping really hard about now, if they could manage. It would be the best time to come after them and make a final hit, while they were dead to the world and wouldn't be able to predict or defend themselves.

The more she thought about this, the more she found herself unable to sit still, squirming and practically twitching with her anxiety. What if they were all walking up and down Quinn's street right now, checking all the houses, one by one, for survivors? What if they had gotten smart enough to get weapons? What if they were even at this very moment right outside Quinn's door, contemplating breaking in? Should they turn off the lights, what if they saw the lights and knew someone was home? But if they turned off the lights, how could she see them coming fast enough?

She couldn't take it. It seemed to her hours and hours since she and Quinn had laid down, even though a fast glance at the digital alarm clock by Quinn's bed told her it had only been eight minutes. That seemed entirely impossible. Was time now moving slower too on top of everything, had all this craziness also somehow managed to affect time itself? It didn't seem possible that only a few hours had passed since her father came home…was that because it really hadn't been?

Santana shifted, taking half the covers with her as she rolled onto her side, facing away from Quinn. She lay there for a few moments, then, finding this position no more comfortable than the first, she rolled over again, back onto her back, and then onto her side. Exhaling, she lay there, facing Quinn's back, and after another few seconds spoke to her in a loud whisper.

"Quinn. Are you trying to sleep?"

She heard a loud sigh from the other girl, but Quinn didn't turn to face her as she answered.

"Yes, Santana, that's generally what you do when you're lying in bed at 2 am. I know that your mind probably jumps to other activities associated with that first, but most of us, we sleep."

"How can you sleep right now?" Santana persisted, no longer even bothering to pretend to whisper. She tapped Quinn's shoulder, scooting closer to her until her knees touched the back of Quinn's legs. "How is it even possible for you to try right now?"

"It's not, with you talking in my ear every two seconds," Quinn retorted. "Look, Santana, we need to sleep. If we're going to be at all able to think tomorrow and keep doing everything we'll need to, we need at least a few hours."

"I can't," Santana informed her, hearing the edge in her voice, almost but not quite a whine, and she gritted her teeth, trying to control her voice so it sounded irritated instead, a much more comfortable emotion to express for her. "Not at night. Quinn, night is the best time for them to come after us, because sleeping is exactly what they'll think we're doing. They can break in and we won't even hear them, they'll come in here and we'll be dead to the world, metaphorically, and they'll make us dead to the world, literally. No, there is no way I'm sleeping at night when you're supposed to."

"Santana," Quinn's voice held more than a little annoyance now, and she sat up slowly with a loud sigh, rubbing her fist over her eyes as she turned to face her. "No one is in here. No one is coming in here. You need to-"

"How the hell do you know that, Quinn, I didn't see you look into a crystal ball," Santana shot back. Her hands reached out to grasp hold of Quinn's arm, nails digging in as her voice rose with increasing near panic while she continued to talk. "They might be coming in right this second. We didn't block everything off as much as we should, if they're strong or there's a bunch of them out there or they have weapons we might as well have installed a revolving door for them to come in. Quinn, do you hear something out there? Fuck, I swear I just heard a clicking noise. Did you hear a clicking noise? What if that's a fucking lock, what if they just picked a lock and they're coming in here RIGHT NOW?!"

When Quinn pulled her arm out of her grasp, sliding her legs off the bed and beginning to walk towards the bedroom door, Santana's eyes widened, and she hurriedly stood too, though she didn't yet follow her to the door.

"Quinn, what are you doing? Where are you going?"

"Going to go check and make sure everything's still okay," Quinn told her calmly, barely glancing back over her shoulder at her. "Before you work yourself into a panic attack."

It was a mark of Santana's fear in the moment that she let the comment about her having a panic attack slide. Instead she almost lunged after Quinn, seizing hold of her wrist and pulling her back slightly from the doorway.

"Checking?! You can't check, if you check and they're in here you're fucking done for!"

"San, I really don't think anyone's in here. But if they are, I'll bring a weapon. Trust me, I think I'll take my chances so I can actually get some sleep tonight instead of lay in bed worrying about it with you elbowing me in the ribs and jabbering in my ear all night."

"Quinn!" Santana hissed, yanking on her arm again, and when Quinn turned back to her, eyebrows raised to her hairline, Santana took a deep breath, her heart slamming hard against her rib cage as she made herself respond.

"I'm coming too. Sticking together, remember? It's not like you could handle a horde of cannibals all on your own, you have shit endurance."

"You have to be kidding me now," Quinn shook her head at her, half laughing, half truly indignant. "I've beat you at every strength based training and every long distance running we've ever done since junior year!"

"Only because the twins slowed me down a little when I was getting used to them!" Santana protested, gesturing towards her augmented breasts, even as Quinn snorted, almost laughing in her face.

"Since you still couldn't beat me if you tried, are you trying to say it's been well over two years and you're still not used to them? What kind of Dr. Frankenfurter of a surgeon did you use?"

"Probably the same one that did your nose, since you obviously can't use it to smell danger when it's outside your fucking door," Santana snapped. "If we're gonna go, then let's go."

Because the longer the waited, the more likely she was to tell Quinn to forget it and just get back in bed with her. And no matter what had happened or how petrified she truly did feel, years of deeply ingrained behavioral patterns still wouldn't allow for Santana to ever admit to her that she was afraid.

As they started down the hallway, Santana's head swiveled frequently back and forth, inching more than walking across the carpeted floor. She kept one hand on Quinn's shoulder, letting the other girl walk slightly in front of her, and each time she thought she saw a movement of shadow on the wall, or heard the faintest noise that she couldn't identify, she flinched and frequently gasped, her nails digging into Quinn's skin. Several times she tread on Quinn's heel, until the girl turned around, shaking off her hand on her shoulder, and looked her in the eyes, taking a visible breath, as if she were trying to maintain her patience before she spoke.

"Santana, it's okay. Seriously. I really don't think anything's trying to get in right now, it's okay."

"Did you hear the key part of that sentence, right now?" Santana pointed out, shaking her head at her. "Just because they aren't at this exact second doesn't mean they won't be in twenty more seconds, or five minutes, or an hour."

"Right," Quinn muttered, more to herself than to Santana. "And let me guess, you are not at all scared, right now, and not at all overly clingy."

"No, I'm not," Santana insisted, scowling at her. But even as she spoke, her grip on Quinn's arm didn't loosen even slightly. "I'm cautious. It's perfectly normal to be cautious, considering."

"Uh huh," the skepticism in Quinn's voice came through loud and clear. "What you are is scared, Santana. I can practically hear your teeth chattering."

"Yeah, well it's fucking cold in your house, and it's the middle of December and I don't have socks on!" Santana defended herself, even as she checked to make sure that Quinn was wrong, and she really wasn't shaking that badly. Okay, maybe she was shaking just a little bit, but definitely Quinn was exaggerating about the chattering teeth. She wasn't a cartoon character.

"You're scared, Santana, and it's okay," Quinn told her in a quieter tone. "I'd be more worried if you weren't." She met her gaze, holding it until Santana released a slow breath and looked away, then reached to take her hand rather than letting Santana hold her arm. "We'll get something to use as a weapon. Here, hold my left hand, it's lucky that you're left handed and I'm right, so we both have our dominant hands free to use."

It took a good thirty minutes of searching the entire house, Santana holding her knife raised high, eyes casting suspicious glances towards every unidentified shadow, before she was somewhat convinced that no one was in it with them. She and Quinn checked and rechecked windows and doors, helping each other shove whatever they could in front of them to further block them off, and eventually, even more exhausted than they had been before they started, they started to make their way back to Quinn's bedroom, still tightly holding hands. Santana was quiet, but when she and Quinn climbed back into the bed, Quinn pointedly making sure to spread the sheet and blanket evenly over them rather than allow Santana to jerk most of them over herself again, she spoke up, rolling to face Quinn and scooting close.

"Are you going to sleep now?"

Quinn's sigh was even louder and more dramatic than it had been the first time she started this scenario, and her voice was more weary than frustrated this time when she responded.

"I'm pretty sure we had this conversation before. And believe it or not, nothing's changed. Yes, I'm lying in the bed at now 3 am with my eyes closed because I have every intention of trying to sleep. TRYING to sleep. If you'll let me."

"Okay, okay," Santana grumbled, but her eyes remained open as she kept them on Quinn, watching the slow, steady slight movement of her back with her breaths. How could the other girl lay so still now, after everything? How could her body just rest? How could she shut her mind off enough to even make the effort?

She tried to let her be, she really did. At least for a few minutes. But even a few minutes of quiet, of simply watching Quinn try to sleep, proved to be too much. Santana felt sharply and intensely alone, as though, even with Quinn in sight, there was nothing and no one anywhere near her at all. What if Quinn went to sleep and never woke up? Or what if she woke up changed? How did Santana know what would happen, if she just let her go to sleep?

It was with this thought that Santana's hand shot out, and she shook Quinn's shoulder slightly, whispering her name.

"Quinn. You're not asleep yet, are you?"

"Santana, stop touching me already!" Quinn's voice rose, and she let out a noise that was almost a growl, rolling over with some aggression in the gesture to face her. "What? What do you want now?"

Santana doesn't have a response for her. Not one she can voice. She wants so much more than Quinn can give her, more than anyone can. Instead, she just swallows, curling her knees to her chest as she too closed her eyes, her voice coming out softly in her reply.

"Nothing."

There is quiet between them for maybe another minute, before Santana shifts herself, turning over. It's not that the bed is uncomfortable, but she herself is strangely achy and sore. She tries to reason out to herself why this could be, and when it occurs to her that this was undoubtedly from fighting both her mother and Brittany, not to mention helping Quinn to drag their bodies outside, her stomach lurched, bile rising into her throat, and it was only with difficulty that she swallowed it back down. She squirmed with more insistence then, accidentally kicking Quinn, and the other girl sighed loudly, rolling over herself to face Santana.

"Santana. Can you just be still already?"

"No," Santana snapped, but when Quinn sighed loudly again, her irritation more than evident, she bit her lip, confessing in a softer tone. "No, I can't, Quinn, okay, I can't. I can't stop thinking."

"Well, try," was Quinn's less than patient response.

She rolled back over, taking the covers that Santana's wiggling had yanked off of her as she did so. Santana kept her eyes on Quinn's rounded back, wanting badly then for the other girl to turn back to her, to speak to her and assure her. She wanted Quinn to hold her hand or stroke her hand through her hair, but that wouldn't be like Quinn at all, to make sure an offer, and it wasn't like Santana to ask. She wasn't Brittany or her mother, or even a puppyishly affectionate Rachel Berry. She was Quinn Fabray, the definition of WASP, and so Santana simply stared at her back, surprising even herself when she spoke softly again.

"Quinn…I really don't want to go to sleep. I really don't think I can."

She heard Quinn sigh yet again and expected her to say to her that the least she could do then was to let Quinn sleep, or that she should drink some water or put in headphones and listen to music, or just lay there and close her eyes. But Quinn surprised her.

"Santana," she said softly as she rolled over to face her, meeting Santana's eyes across from her in the room's brightly lit interior. "You know we're okay right now. We just checked. We're okay."

"No we are not," Santana corrected her, shaking her head with some emphasis. "I don't care if all the psychos leave us alone for the rest of our lives, that doesn't make us okay right now. We are NOT okay."

"Okay, you're right…we're not," Quinn admitted, conceding her point. "We're not okay. But we're alive, Santana, and we're about as safe as is possible right now. We're not hurt-"

"Speak for yourself, Quinn, because me, I'm fucking hurt," Santana cut her off, her voice tight as she shook her head again. "I'm more hurt than I've ever been in my whole fucking life."

She couldn't keep speaking anymore and keep back the tears that were again wanting to spill over, so she just swallowed, over and over, closing her eyes tight against their building pressure. There was nothing Quinn could say right now that would make this better; didn't she know that? Didn't she understand that the only thing she could do was agree?

Quinn didn't say anything, in those moments where Santana struggled to compose herself. She likely could think of nothing to say that would be even slightly accepted by Santana. It was Santana who broke their silence again, finally opening her eyes, wide and slightly wet, to look into Quinn's.

"What I don't get is how the hell you can still believe in God after all this. What kind of horrible, sick asshole of a God would ever let this happen. Why would you even want to believe?"

"You can't blame this on God, Santana," Quinn started, but if she had any further thought to add to this, Santana wasn't about to let her finish it.

"Oh, I can't? How the hell do you know that? For all you know this is God's way of wiping us all out, the fucking apocalypse or Armageddon or whatever you want to call it. A curse on all us evil sinners. Who am I going to blame this on if not God?"

"God doesn't control what humans do," Quinn replied, more patiently than Santana would have expected. "Free will comes into things. If you want to blame someone, blame the humans. I'm pretty sure this came about because someone, somewhere screwed up."

"Oh, is that right? Then if God is still the big cheese up in the sky loving everyone, then what the hell do I have to do to call attention to the obvious fact that people are suffering here, the people he's supposed to love so damn much?" Santana's muscles were rigid, almost twitching with the intensity of her anger at Quinn's words. "What, I'm supposed to PRAY?"

"Maybe," Quinn answered, her eyes still fixed steadily on Santana's now narrowed ones. "Sometimes that's all you can do."

"I refuse to pray to a God who has so much damn power and won't use it to keep my mother or Brittany from dying," Santana's voice was barely audible, shaking so badly with her emotions that even she could barely understand herself. "I refuse to pray to a God who just shouted fuck you to the entire world. I refuse to think that heaven just needed more angels or it will work out for the best or God works in mysterious ways or any of the bullshit we're told all our lives. If God exists, then I hate him. If God exists, he's worse than all the psychos he's letting ruin our lives."

There were tears running down her cheeks by the time she finished, seeping into her neck and collar bones and wetting the sides of her hair. Santana sniffed loudly, trying to keep herself from crying outright, but her tears kept coming, her voice fading off into a weak whisper that was almost a cry in and of itself.

"I hate him, Quinn, I hate him…I can't do this. I can't, I can't."

She wasn't even sure what it was that she was saying she couldn't do. She was just so tired and so overwhelmed with emotions, so beyond exhausted in every possible sense of the world. So she let herself sag into the mattress beside Quinn, crying in tired, sniffling breaths more than full on tears, and she didn't have the energy to think very much about it when Quinn scooted in close, one hand reaching out to slowly wipe tears with her fingertips, then stroke through her hair.

"Shhh…okay, San, okay. Shhh."

Her fingers continued to comb through Santana's hair, gently working out any snags or knots she encountered with her fingers, and her other hand stroked over Santana's face, wiping tears, then just resting a hand lightly against her cheek. Quinn's face was very intent, her hazel eyes dark with her focus as she continued to speak quietly, almost in rhythm with the gentle stroking of her hands.

"Close your eyes, Santana. Close your eyes."

Santana did what she asked with a loud exhalation of breath, feeling another tear slip down her eye and be wiped away by Quinn's hand. Eyes still closed, she lay still, letting herself be caressed. It reminded her of Brittany, of her mother, and yet as terrible as it was to think of this, with her eyes closed, Quinn's gentle hands on her, she could almost let herself imagine that it was.

She knew it was Quinn, with her. She recognized her voice, and her hands were smaller than Brittany's, her touch much more hesitant than her mother's. But still, when Quinn's hand pulled at her shoulder gently, getting her to roll over, and then pulled her back against her chest, closing her arms around her and resting her chin on Santana's shoulder, Santana found herself still letting her thoughts drift off towards them, letting herself imagine, however briefly, that it was their arms around her, their breath against her skin.

Slowly her tears eased off, and she felt her body start to relax, her closed eyes becoming less of an effort to maintain. She thought, as she drifted at last into sleep, that she felt something damp, something like tears, dripping into her hair, but she no longer had the clarity of thought to wonder when it was that Quinn had started to cry.


	9. Chapter 9

The following morning, when Santana started to drift back into consciousness, she thought, for a few moments of supreme hope, that maybe, just maybe, it had all been a terrible dream. Maybe when she opened her eyes and swung her feet off of the bed, she would walk downstairs and be greeted by her mother with a smile and a kiss to her cheek. Maybe her father would be actually home for a change and he too would give her a nod of acknowledgement, and then she would pick up the phone and see that Brittany had texted her, and everything would be right in her world after all. Maybe…

She was provided with the possibility of this when she became aware of the warmth of a body pressed against her back, an arm draped over her stomach, of warm, even breaths against her neck. Even before she had time to really wake up enough to process it, Santana smiled, beginning to feel relief. Brittany…

But it didn’t take more than another few seconds for her to realize that the body pressed up against hers was shorter and somewhat softer than Brittany’s, that the arm around her was less firm in its hold, and as her memory clicked back through time, struggling to bring up the present reality, her stomach twisted sharply with her disappointment and renewed rush of pain. 

It had all happened, after all. It was Quinn holding her now, Quinn, the only person she could be sure was left in her world.

Again Santana’s eyes grew hot as tears pressed against her still-closed eyelids. But she took a slow breath in, pressing her back more closely against Quinn’s chest, and then exhaled slowly, deliberately forcing her thoughts in a new direction.

It was true; her mother and Brittany were dead, and Quinn’s mother too. If her father wasn’t dead, then he might as well be, because Santana could not go to him for comfort or company or support. Undoubtedly Santana was going to discover over time more and more of exactly who it was she had lost, and the grand total was going to be devastating.

But she wasn’t lost herself…not yet. She was still alive, and Quinn was alive, and as unenthusiastic as she might be about that fact right now, she knew that it was what Brittany and her mother would want for her. No matter how much Santana might prefer to be with them, whatever that might mean for her, no matter how terrible and scary and depressing everything was to her now, or how little she understood, there were still a few things that she knew would be true for all of time. 

Her mother and Brittany had loved her. They would never have tried to hurt her, if they could have helped it, or if they were still at all themselves. And they would never, ever want Santana to give up on her life or let go of it before she absolutely had to. They would want her to fight with every bit of ferocity she possessed to hang onto it, to make them proud of her. They would want her to live, for them, even if her life seemed pointless and bleak and terribly depressing. 

But no, it wasn’t pointless. Because she would be living to make them happy, to show them that what they wanted for her mattered. 

From this point on, her life would be about Brittany, about her mother, and what they would want her to do. They would want her alive, and they would want her to stick with Quinn and keep her alive too. That was Santana’s purpose, now, whether she wanted it or not.

As she opened her eyes, this decided then in her mind, she realized that she felt flushed and grimy, despite having been bathed the night before. Her hair was stuck to her face in small pieces from her earlier tears, and she felt sluggish and sore all over, reluctant to move. She let herself lie there for a few moments, as much to let Quinn sleep as because she herself didn’t want to get up just yet, and let her thoughts drift again in regards to their situation. 

She had refused to let herself consider it the night before, however obvious it might seem, because the idea was just so ridiculous and sci fi that it was beyond what she was capable of acknowledging at that time. But it had been a few hours, Santana had had the benefit of a little sleep, and now, she could admit it to herself.

What was happening, outside of Quinn’s home, what had taken over their mothers and Brittany…they were becoming zombies. It was the only explanation that made sense, and it changed everything about how Santana was going to have to view this.  
She tried to remember, as they lay in bed, waiting for Quinn to stir awake, what it was that she knew and understood about zombies from everything she had ever encountered in regards to them, over time. She knew, of course, that zombies were supposedly dead, or the undead, at any rate. She was pretty sure that zombies were made from biting other people, and mixing alive and undead blood. She couldn’t remember if zombies were supposed to move fast or slow, because that rule seemed to change from movie to movie, but she definitely hadn’t noticed any of the ones she had encountered so far being particularly slow. One thing she did remember- the part she really didn’t want to think about too much- was that there was no way to stop them, once they had become a zombie, but to kill them.

 

If this were true- and Santana could think of no other explanation that would make sense except this one- then that meant that the deaths of the people she loved had been inevitable, even right. It meant that Quinn had been right, and as Santana slowly tossed this idea around in her thoughts, it was difficult for her to accept.

She had become accustomed already to thinking of Quinn’s action as a betrayal, as a huge mistake that the other girl had made in haste. But if it was actually necessary, as Quinn had insisted, if it was the only possible course of action she could have taken…well, that would make it a little bit harder to resent and hate her for it. Not impossible…but harder. 

As though she could unconsciously realize that Santana’s thoughts were on her, Quinn began to stir from behind her, her legs pressing slightly against the backs of Santana’s. Santana felt her pull away from her with a faint groan, slowly pulling herself up into a sitting position, and she sat up too, turning to face her.

“Sleeping beauty,” she said with some slight sarcasm, but not harsh about it. Quinn’s eyes were a little puffy, her hair tousled from sleep, but it would take more than that for her to not look beautiful. 

“Mm,” Quinn grunted her response, rubbing her hands across her face and taking a slow breath in. She exhaled, still rubbing at her face, but Santana didn’t wait for her to wake up all the way before she got straight to the points she had been pondering since her own awakening.

“They’re zombies.”

Still not quite awake, Quinn just squinted at her, furrowing her brow. “…huh?”

“Everyone,” Santana continued, turning to face Quinn fully, even leaning towards her with some intensity in her expression and tone. “All the people attacking everyone, all the ones that get bit and do the biting…they’re zombies. I just realized that.”

Quinn raised one eyebrow, appearing none too shocked by this declaration. “Yeah, I know, Santana,” she replied, shrugging one shoulder. “I’ve pretty much always known that.”

Santana’s own eyebrows shot up, and her mouth dropped open slightly, more in indignation than true shock. “What? You mean you knew and you didn’t TELL me?”

“Well, people biting other people and then instantly turning them into other crazy biting people afterward does kind of spell out zombie in a major way,” Quinn pointed out, running a hand through her hair. “And as for telling you, would you have actually been able to listen or believe me if I tried to tell you last night?”

Okay, so Quinn had a point there. Rather than choosing to acknowledge this, though, Santana just shoved her sheets and blanket off of herself and got to her feet, moving to Quinn’s closet and selecting some of her clothing, not bothering to ask first, for herself to wear for the day. She could feel Quinn’s eyes on her and ignored it until the other girl stood too, taking a step towards her without actually approaching the rest of the way.

“Not that I’m complaining or unhappy about it, but I really didn’t expect you to have this much pep this morning.”

“If it’s zombies, then we have to figure out what to do about them,” Santana replied, not bothering to glance back at her over her shoulder as she reached for one of Quinn’s hair ties on her dresser. Running her fingers through her hair, she began to weave its strands into a loose braid. “We need to get online and on the news and stuff and learn as much as we can. Maybe there’s a way to change them back. You know? Maybe way, way deep down in some of those nerd culture websites some bucktoothed four eyed gore geek has figured out how to resurrect zombies into people. So let’s go.”

“San,” Quinn’s voice held skepticism as she came alongside her, reaching for a blouse to change into as well. “If someone had figured that out they would probably be spreading that far and wide right now. You know that the president and all the other authority figures of America said they’re trying to figure out how to stop this, don’t you think they would have said so if they knew how, and then started actually doing it?”

“Yeah, and what if the people that know already got killed because they’re helpless, defenseless little scrawny muscled geeks?” Santana shot back, pulling a pair of Quinn’s sweat pants over her hips. “You also heard the president saying that they were TRYING to figure it out, meaning that they HAVEN’T figured it out, so obviously they don’t know and they haven’t actually done shit. Damn, Fabray, don’t you own even one pair of jeans? Just one?”

“I don’t like having something tight around my legs,” Quinn responded, to which Santana snorted, tossing a glance back at her over her shoulder.

“Oh, like the little Cheerios skirts and leggings that you wore every day you were allowed to, not tight like that?”

“That was a uniform and a necessity, and none of this is the point,” Quinn chose a skirt to go with the blouse, much to Santana’s annoyance. What kind of person wore a freaking skirt with zombies drooling outside their door? Only Quinn could be such a priss that she didn’t own even one freaking pair of jeans that weren’t dictated as a Glee costume or something.

“The point is, I completely agree that we need to learn about what the zombies are, what sort of threats they pose to us, and what we can do to defend ourselves, but if you’re setting out thinking you’ll find a cure by a five minute google search, you’re going to be disappointed, San. I’m just trying to prepare you for that.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to prepare you to do the shit we’ll have to do to do by knowing the shit we have to know,” Santana snapped back. 

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she was going to make this all right again, that Quinn didn’t even seem to want to make it all right, but she swallowed it back, because in truth, she knew very well that there was nothing she could do to make this possible. It didn’t matter if all the killing and weirdness of their world had stopped miraculously while they slept and someone had cleaned up all the dead bodies and blood and gore and there was nothing left for her to have to learn or deal with at all. It didn’t matter, because it still wouldn’t be okay; nothing in her world could ever fully be okay again.

Taking Quinn’s laptop from her desk, she took it back to the bed with her, sitting down and turning it on. It seemed entirely too long to Santana before its screen lit up and the password request came across the screen. Typing in Quinn’s password “ilovebacon” with a roll of her eyes, Santana pulled up Google Chrome with the fingers of her right hand tapping restlessly as she waited.

Only it wouldn’t come up. As she checked the internet server, she saw that there was no internet access available for her to use.

“Shit…Quinn, get your tablet or your phone,” she ordered, wanting to see if the hot spot would work, but when Quinn, with only a sigh to express her thoughts about this, rose to do so, she soon saw that these too were not working options.

Eyes narrowing with frustration, Santana tried on all three devices repeatedly, the beginnings of fear as well as anger starting to press against her chest, but whatever she attempted, nothing would come up. She was unable to access the internet at all.

Watching her from where she still stood by her dresser, Quinn said quietly, “I don’t know how those things work, but if something’s happened to the workers that work with the internet, or the cable or internet lines or something…”

“Oh, like I didn’t come up with that all on my very own since none of them will fucking work,” Santana snapped, letting her frustration come out towards her, since she couldn’t very well vent it out on the devices before her. 

She kicked one foot against the mattress, then stood abruptly, moving to turn on Quinn’s TV. Quinn wisely refrained from pointing out to her that the remote control was on the night stand right beside her, instead standing back and letting her jab at the power button as though the TV itself had offended her. Santana started to manually switch channels, but everything they were seeing on the screen was nothing but static or blurry lines. She went through every single channel twice before she could let herself start to understand. Something had clearly happened with the TV channels as well; either to the stations in charge of broadcasting shows, or to the cable line affecting the TV.

This meant that she and Quinn had no connection at all to any news of the outside world. Whatever they learned, they would have to learn from their own observations and their own actions. There was nothing to help them out any longer. 

Watching Santana figure this out in silence, Quinn simply waited, crossing her arms over her chest. As Santana turned to her, eyes wide, Quinn exhaled, anticipating her exclamation and intercepting it before she could speak.

“I sort of figured this might happen. I mean, they aren’t even answering 911. Why would someone bother to keep up the TV stations or internet if they can’t even answer the emergency line?”

“Make sure it’s not just us,” Santana ordered, and when Quinn just arched an eyebrow, she intensified her voice, raising its volume as well. “Quinn, give me the phone, we need to start calling people!” 

“San, if the internet is down and the TV is down and the entire world is pretty much in chaos, what makes you think the phone lines and phone companies are working perfectly?” Quinn asked, but Santana wasn’t in the mood for logical negativity. 

She snatched up Quinn’s cell phone, beginning to dial out to every single person on her phone list whose name she recognized. Time after time it went straight to voicemail or else an electronic voice informing her she had reached a number no longer in service greeted her, until Santana threw the phone on the bed in disgust and frustration. Seizing hold of Quinn’s wrist and dragging her with her out into the hallway- even this irritated, she wasn’t about to go anywhere alone- she took up the landline phone in her living room and started to attempt to dial out with it too, soon finding that this too was proving impossible, that she couldn’t even dial out with the landline at all. Looking up at Quinn, fingers gripping the phone’s receiver until her knuckles went white, Santana’s jaw clinched. 

“We can’t be fucking stuck here with no way to know what’s going on or what we can do or if there’s even anyone else in existence right now. No fucking way!”

“Well, we can look out the window, or get in the car and drive off,” Quinn continued to respond with infuriating logic, logic that made Santana want to reach out and shake her until her teeth rattled, just for looking so damn calm. “But I wouldn’t advise that. At least not yet.”

“Then what the hell would you advise, given the fact that we don’t have a whole fucking lot of options here?” Santana rounded on her, taking a step towards her and lifting her chin with some aggression in the gesture. “Staying here in this house staring at the walls for the rest of our lives?”

“Not for the rest of our lives,” Quinn responded evenly, not flinching away from her, and in fact continuing to look her straight in the eyes. “But until we can figure out what’s reasonable for us to do that will best insure we’ll survive. Until we can come up with a plan and how to carry it out. And until we’ve given it some time for all of this to maybe die down a little bit, or at least give us time to calm down emotionally enough to do what we need to do.”

“Oh, right, so you’re gonna blame the fact that you want to sit here doing nothing on me,” Santana accused, jabbing a resentful finger in Quinn’s direction as she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and huffed a sigh aloud. “I’m fucking calm enough to do whatever the hell we have to do, Quinn. I can do it. I can do it, I’m fine, so let’s just make a plan, now.”

“Okay,” Quinn turned away from her, beginning to walk towards the kitchen. When Santana followed, as Quinn must have known she would, she addressed her without looking back to acknowledge that she could hear her walking behind her. “Plan A, we sit down, eat some breakfast. Plan B, we brush our teeth. Plan C, we check that all the doors and windows are still good-“

“This isn’t a joke, Quinn!” Santana burst out with, her hands clinching into fists at her sides. “We need to decide what to do! Funny that for someone who was Miss Action, Miss GI Joe Jane yesterday, you’re not willing to do anything at all today!”

She realized that she had again skated too close to the line when Quinn’s back visibly stiffened, and the other girl was careful not to let even a small piece of her profile turn so that Santana would be able to see her facial expression. Quinn’s voice was pure ice as she opened the refrigerator, removing a carton of orange juice still without turning to face her.

“Funny for someone who was the Cowardly Lion yesterday, you’re a supposed Wonder Woman today.”

“Excuse me?” If Quinn’s voice was ice, Santana’s was pure heat. She came forward in two long strides, her hand clamping down on Quinn’s shoulder and squeezing with slow but intent pressure, letting her nails dig into her skin through her blouse just enough to cause some discomfort. “I knows you didn’t just call me a coward.”

“Maybe check your hearing then,” Quinn shot back. She gave a rough shrug of her shoulder, dislodging Santana’s hand, and brushed past her, walking through the entrance way to the dining room and sitting down at its table. Santana was on her heels, grabbing her wrist and spinning Quinn back to face her as she leaned in close, almost nose to nose.

“If I’m the Cowardly Lion, then you’re the Tin Man- no fucking heart. Or is it the witch?”

“I don’t know about who’s a witch, but I know someone who’s a real bitch,” Quinn snapped, her hazel eyes narrowed until only a small slit of their color could be seen. 

Santana could see her hand twitch where it still gripped the orange juice container and knew that she was wanting to slap her. Smirking, her heart beating fast in her chest, she stepped that much closer, hovering over Quinn in her personal space, deliberately provoking her. Part of her knew this was ridiculous, stupid, even. Quinn was the only person left in her life right now; alienating her and pissing her off was not just unwise, but possibly even dangerous to their focus and their ability to have each other’s back, as they had promised each other they would. But it was the only thing now that she could seem to put her energy into, the only distraction from her present reality and her true emotions that seemed available, and so she seized onto it, not backing up an inch either in proximity or in emotional reasoning.

“Oh, I’m the bitch, huh? Huh let’s see, yesterday I go out of my way to save your ass when I could have been the hell out of this sorry town, risk my life AND other people’s because YOU asked ME for help, now I’m stuck here in YOUR house, and all you can do is-“

“Shut up, Santana!” Quinn hissed suddenly, one hand shooting out and covering Santana’s lips. When Santana squawked in genuine fury, pulling at her arm with both hands, Quinn hung on, whispering into her ear with such fierce urgency in her tone that Santana shivered, her words tickling her skin not entirely unpleasantly.

“Shut up,” she said to her, not as harshly, but still in her ear, and she didn’t release her hand over her mouth. “I hear something. Shut up and listen!”

Santana wanted nothing more than to defy her, just to be contrary. But there was fear in Quinn’s tone, and she could feel the girl’s heart, beating fast against her arm from the awkward way in which Quinn held her in place against her. So she went quiet, listening, as Quinn had demanded, her own heart beginning to speed up in automatic response to hers.

It didn’t take long for her to hear it too…a loud, persistent banging noise, coming from the general direction of the front of the house. There was someone out there, Santana realized with horror replacing every bit of her anger, as her clutching of Quinn’s arm quickly became a grip intended for comfort and support rather than to push her away. Someone was trying to get into the house.


	10. Chapter 10

"You hear it too, right?" Quinn breathed into her ear, and Santana heard her swallow loudly, her hand slowly sliding off of Santana's mouth and resting on her shoulder instead. "You hear it…it's trying to get in."

Santana nodded, her lips thinning together into a firm line, and she tried to take a deep breath, even as she felt goosebumps prickle up and down her skin. She tried to remember what powers, exactly, it was that zombies had. Did they have unnatural strength? Were they smart enough to find and use weapons? If she and Quinn didn't answer, would they simply go away, or would they keep pounding away until the door finally gave under?

Both hands clutched at Quinn's arm, keeping the other girl anchored to her side. She didn't want Quinn out of her immediate reach, let alone out of her sight. Thoughts stumbling and tangling with each other as she tried to come up with the best course of action to take, Santana considered each with certainty that none would work. Hide? Block the door better? Attack back?

But Quinn decided for her. Gently plucking Santana's hands off her arm, reaching to entangle her fingers with hers instead, she whispered to her again, her lips against her ear, "We need to go make sure that it can't get inside. And if it can…we need to deal with the situation."

"Are you crazy?" Santana hissed back to her, shaking her head emphatically. "Deal with the situation, how?"

At this Quinn paused, seeming stumped as to how to respond- or maybe simply not wanting to. She took a breath, then said slowly, "I guess however we need to. But we have to do something, Santana, we have to see what's going on or we'll never have a second's peace today."

"No, we need to not confirm the fact that we exist to whatever is out there," Santana argued, the hand not tightly clinched around Quinn's making dramatic gestures to back up her opinion. "What if it figures out we're in and it tries way harder to get in too? Or what if it goes to rally up its zombie buddies and brings them all back here with it, and they all start surrounding us all over, and we can't do shit to stop them from breaking in because there's too damn many?"

This wasn't an option she had seriously considered until the words left her mouth, but once they had, they were words she couldn't seem to dismiss as a valid possibility. Wasn't that something zombies did, travel in packs? God, why hadn't she watched Walking Dead or Night of the Living Dead or even Zombieland, couldn't she have at least sat through a movie Emma Stone was in, so she could know what the hell she was doing here?!

"We need to know exactly what's going on out there, Santana," Quinn countered. She squeezed her hand, but despite the tension in her back and shoulders, the glint of fear in her eyes, she kept her chin lifted, and she regarded Santana steadily. "We need to know so we can decide what we have to do. I'd rather know than lock myself in a closet and freak out wondering until we don't have any options left at all because the situation it out of our hands."

"Right, and if we KNOW the situation and it just happens to be that we're surrounded by a horde of things that want to fucking eat us alive, once we've ascertained that little piece of info, what exactly do you propose we do?" Santana snapped back at Quinn, no longer bothering to keep her voice down until Quinn gestured frantically, glaring at her and shaking her head. Santana swallowed, biting the inside of her cheeks as Quinn murmured back to her.

"I don't know, Santana, all right, I don't know. But at least we'll know that we need to decide fast."

This was hardly the sort of comforting, assertive plan of action that Santana had been hoping for. But Quinn was already walking forward, tugging Santana with her, and as much as Santana didn't want to follow, she also could think of no better plan than Quinn's to throw out at her.

The thudding noises were continuing, not rhythmic, but uneven, spaced apart. They seemed to be coming from the front of the house, and as the girls approached, Santana felt Quinn squeezing her hand back every bit as tightly as Santana was holding hers, even though the other girl said nothing to her to otherwise convey her nerves. Santana's head swiveled frequently, checking every window they passed by, but it seemed clear as they continued forward that the noises originated from the front door.

Once they reached it, they stood, shaking slightly, hands still tightly entwined, shoulders pressed together as they listened to the continued knocking at the door. Now that they were close enough they could hear scratching noises as well, as though thing outside was trying to claw its way inside if its blows to the door would not work. Santana's mouth was dry as she listened. With a burst of courage she pulled Quinn forward, standing on her toes to look through the peephole, and saw with mixed relief and dread that it was only one zombie standing outside- a man perhaps in his early thirties, no weapon in hand, ignoring the windows on either side of the house in favor of uselessly banging his fists against the door.

"It's only one," Santana reported back to Quinn still in a loud whisper, her shoulders sagging slightly as she stepped back.

Quinn too released a relieved breath, stepping back with Santana, but her relief was short lived, it seemed, for the girls could still hear the knocks, steadily falling against the front door's frame. Santana stood very still, fingers squeezing Quinn's until she could barely tell the difference between her hand and the other girl's as she tried to decide what exactly it was that they should do.

"He…he didn't see me through the keyhole," she said to Quinn with cautious optimism that she didn't truly feel. "And…and he doesn't seem to be making a dent in the door…and I don't see any weapons…do you think he's too stupid to go for the windows instead?"

She was wanting Quinn to answer in the affirmative rather than genuinely asking her opinion, but Quinn didn't oblige her.

"I think he might figure it out, even if it takes a while," Quinn whispered back to her, squeezing her hand back almost as tightly. "And I think I can't stand listening to him for as long as that might take. He's making enough noise that other zombies might hear him and come join him, San, and they might not all be as stupid as he is."

That possibility hadn't even occurred to Santana. She heard her breath escape her in a loud whoosh as she considered this, her palm beginning to sweat against Quinn's.

"You…you really think that more of them might come if they hear him?"

"Yes," Quinn said quietly, nodding. "They don't seem very bright, but if they hear noise and see motion, even stupid creatures are naturally drawn to that."

Santana processed this too, not at all liking the unspoken conclusion that Quinn was drawing up for her. If this zombie making noise was going to bring more, then it would become a much more serious problem than they were currently facing. One zombie they could handle…but a whole crowd, surrounding the house on all sides…

She shuddered, her shoulder pressing closer into Quinn's instinctively for her added warmth before she asked her, "So…what the hell are we supposed to do?"

"Kill it," was Quinn's answer, slow in coming, but sure. "We have to kill it, Santana. It's the only thing that will keep us safe."

Scoffing, Santana shot her a withering look, eyebrows raising. "Right, just kill it. And how exactly do you propose we do that, invite it inside and then stab it?"

"We wouldn't have to invite it inside," Quinn corrected. "All we have to do is open the door enough and then back inside and lock it again."

It took Santana another several minutes to attempt to process this. No matter how she turned it over in her mind, she couldn't seem to picture this without any number of catastrophic results coming into the equation in her thoughts. She shook her head, eyeing Quinn with disbelief as she voiced out loud her own visualization.

"So you think that we should open the door, beat this thing to death with some kind of weapon, pray like hell that nothing else hears and comes running or that he doesn't just knock it out or our hands and rush up and scratch or bite us and force his way in, then lock the door again and hope nothing else follows up after him? Is that your plan here?"

Quinn didn't bother to defend herself or rise to the bait of Santana's sarcastic tone. Instead, she just met her gaze with a challenging look of her own, raising an eyebrow in mirror of hers.

"Do you have a better one?"

As Quinn had no doubt intended for it to, this stopped Santana in her tracks. The truth was that she didn't. She didn't even have a plan that was equally unwelcome, except for maybe hiding back in Quinn's bedroom again and waiting to see if something or someone would break in. For a few seconds she struggled, defiant, trying to come up with something, anything that she could throw back at Quinn as a retort. But when it became clear to her that she in fact that nothing, she sighed, letting her shoulders rise and fall in a jerky shrug.

"No. I don't. So I guess we do this."

"I can do it," Quinn told her, her voice a little more gentle in tone now that Santana was conceding to her way of thinking. "Just stand back, and have my back, and we'll get this over with."

She kept hold of Santana's hand as she backed up towards the living room, her eyes scanning its interior for any potential weapons. Santana's eyes fell onto the fallen poker near the wall, still stained with Brittany's blood, and she swallowed heavily, her stomach flipping upside down. But although Quinn too looked towards it, her eyes skidded away, and she picked up instead a clean, unused second poker from its stand by the fireplace.

"Let's go," she said, but Santana heard the change in her voice, its sudden breathless quality, and when Quinn let go of her hand, Santana saw that her hand was shaking. "Come on."

She lead the way back to the front door, where the zombie's thudding blows against it could still be heard, loudly enough to grate at Santana's nerves. Santana stayed just behind Quinn, grasping hold of the knife she had darted into the kitchen to secure for herself and nervously fingering its handle. She told herself that Quinn knew what she was doing. She had to. Quinn was going to take care of this, it was going to be okay.

But as Quinn slowly approached the door, Santana could see that her hands were shaking so badly they were barely keeping their grip on the poker. Her face had gone almost pure white, her eyes large and bright in her face, and her lips were pressed together into a line so thin they nearly disappeared. As Quinn raised the poker to shoulder level, her arms seemed more unsteady than ever, and Santana's heart seized, watching her.

She was scared. Quinn was scared, and she was not in control at all. She was scared, and she might make huge mistakes because of it. She was scared, and that might mean that she would fail, and that would leave Santana all alone.

"Stop!" she blurted, and Quinn froze, almost dropping the poker with her startled response to Santana's voice. Santana gentled her tone with some effort, coming forward and resting her hand on Quinn's wrist.

"Quinn…I'll do it. Let me."

Quinn paused, looking back at her, and again Santana noted just how brightly her eyes were glinting back at her, the feelings they seemed to be just barely keeping in check that she had not noticed before. Quinn regarded her, seeming to be struggling to come to a decision, and then let her head incline in a jerky nod.

"Okay. Okay…just…be careful."

Her hands were still shaking when she passed the poker to Santana, and for the first few seconds Santana almost gave it back to her, telling her never mind, that she was backing down from her own offer. It felt strangely light in her hands, almost like nothing at all, and as she adjusted her grip, squeezing it until her knuckles went white and cracked loudly, she was aware of Quinn taking her knife in her hands and positioning herself behind her for back up. Santana tried to breathe through the anxiety now filling her chest and throat, terrified that she would give in and back away…but with one inner push of bravery she stepped forward, unlocked the door, and flung it open.

The zombie had not expected this; perhaps it did not realize that there were other people behind the door, or within the home. It stumbled back, its jaw hanging slackly, and Santana saw that one of his arms was barely attached to his body, the strong scent of blood and decay hitting her nostrils. She wanted to gag, but she steeled herself against the odor, steeled herself instead to act. Raising the poker high, she shoved it forward, aiming for the zombie's skull as she let out a loud cry of effort and aggression to drive herself.

She would have expected more force needed to pierce its skin, let alone break through its skull and into its brain, but perhaps the zombie had begun to rot enough that its skin was already soft and giving way. Whatever the case, Santana only needed to give one good shove of the poker for it to hit its mark, with the zombie collapsing in a heap on the porch. She jumped back with a disgusted gasp, pulling the poker with her as she went and nearly dropping it on the step entirely. For a few moments she stood, almost frozen in place as she stared at the figure before her, the poker loose in her grasp, but then she felt Quinn's hands at her waist, tugging her backward. She let herself be pulled inside, let the soiled poker drop to the ground right in front of the doorway as Quinn hurriedly relocked and wedged the chair back under the doorknob. She didn't realize how heavily she was breathing, how badly she was shaking, how wide her eyes were in her face until Quinn's voice registered, muffled but audible, and she felt the girl's hands on her arms, saw her face peering close to her own.

"Santana, come sit down…you need to drink something, I think, you look like you're about to faint…"

Santana let her lead her back towards the living room without quite realizing that she was following along with her, feeling lightheaded and not entirely present in the moment. She let Quinn tug her down to a seated position on her couch, and was not quite aware that Quinn had left the room until she returned with a glass of water, holding it up in front of her face. Only then did she start to feel more alert within her own body, more in tune with her surroundings. She shook her head at Quinn, batting her wrist away from her, and her face screwed up with irritation when Quinn brought the glass of water back again, silently insisting that she drink. She didn't want to drink anything, the problem wasn't that she was thirsty. The problem was that she had just deliberately stuck a poker through the skull of something that had once been a someone, that she had done it deliberately, with full intention of causing it to stop moving forever, and as this realization came over her more thoroughly, she found that she couldn't quite stop herself from starting to tremble heavily, couldn't stop her thoughts from drifting back to her father, to her mother…to Brittany.

She couldn't look at Quinn. She knew, now more than ever, why Quinn had done what she had done, that it had, as much as she hated it, been entirely necessary. But knowledge now of its necessity didn't make it any easier for her to accept what she herself had done without remembering in all too vivid visualization just how Brittany's eyes had looked when another poker had broken through her skin.

Santana's muscles jerked when Quinn's hand hesitantly touched her arm, and she pulled away from her, drawing her arms in as close against her torso as she could manage, making herself small and difficult to touch as possible. She didn't look Quinn in the eye, not wanting to see any concern for her that might linger. Instead she stepped down hard on anger and irritation, a much more comfortable emotion, and shook her head at Quinn, her voice holding a definite edge as she spoke to her.

"Stop touching me, stop hovering over me, I'm fine. Just leave me alone!"

"Santana," Quinn said, her voice quiet, but Santana couldn't stand then to hear anything like logic from her, let alone sympathy. She had to get away from it, she had to draw herself apart from it or she knew she was going to be unable to keep breathing, let alone get through the rest of her day. If she let Quinn touch her now, if she let her talk to her softly or let herself have any space at all to feel, then she would shatter, she just knew it. She would melt into a puddle of feelings, just as she had so many times the day before, and she didn't want that, she couldn't stand to let that happen, not today…not again. Didn't Quinn see that she couldn't stand to keep feeling so much, that she couldn't stand to let herself be comforted? Couldn't she see that it was taking everything she had to hold herself into one fragile piece, with a cracked and translucent shell she desperately pretended was hard and impenetrable?

"Don't touch me," she spat back out at Quinn, getting to her feet with such suddenness in motion that she knocked into Quinn's legs, almost shoving them aside so she could stand. "Just leave me alone."

Quinn didn't try to follow after her, at least not at first, as Santana strode with quick steps down the hallway, not even sure where she was going until she had already closed the bathroom door behind her. She didn't lock it; it was, in fact, her hope that Quinn would somehow magically realize that she did in fact not want to be alone, not really, that being alone meant that the barely marginal sense of safety and security she felt in her presence at times was completely missing when she couldn't see exactly where Quinn was. But her pride would not allow for her to call back to her, to admit to her that she hadn't truly meant what she had said, so instead Santana got a washcloth and soaked it with cold water, starting to wipe her face and her hands again and again until she could barely feel the texture of the cloth against her skin.

She wasn't just washing actual blood or dirt or germs that her hands' surface might presently show. She was trying to scrub from herself the memory of the poker in her hands, of the exact amount of force it had taken to drive it through the skull of what used to be another human being, but her hands couldn't seem to forget the poker's weight, the feeling of blood splattered across their skin.

She couldn't look at herself in the mirror. If she saw her eyes, reflecting all the thoughts and feelings she was trying so hard to shove down, or her chin, quivering with her effort to hold back tears, she wouldn't be able to stay even slightly composed. So she looked at her hands alone, and she ignored the fact that she could hear Quinn, shifting her weight slightly outside the bathroom door, and simply concentrated on the washing, trying to take solace in the simple task.

She knew she had been in there entirely too long to be able to reasonably explain her absence, so when Santana finally gathered herself enough to emerge, chin lifted in an effort to appear composed and even defiant, she didn't even try. Instead, she brushed back Quinn without really acknowledging her presence outside the door, making her way back to her bedroom without really knowing what it was that she intended to do there. She ignored Quinn as the other girl followed her, at least until she questioned her aloud, eyebrow raised.

"Right, so you're gonna ignore what just happened then?"

"Why not?" Santana shot back, barely sparing her a glance over her shoulder. "You do when it's you."

Making a decision for herself in that moment, as much to try to continue avoiding Quinn as because it was really what she wanted to do, she pushed back the blankets of her bed, crawling fully dressed beneath the covers. When Quinn continued to watch her, arms crossed over her chest, Santana turned her back to her, not wanting to see her lips purse up in what she could only assume was judgment.

"I'm going to sleep," she announced, even as her eyes remained open; she knew that Quinn couldn't tell that from where she stood in the doorway. "We didn't sleep for shit last night, and if we can't do anything today, I'm making up for it now."

She heard Quinn sigh, her footsteps approaching her, and then there was a dip in the mattress as Quinn sat beside her. Santana tried to continue ignoring her, but she felt herself tense, expecting Quinn's hand to touch her at any moment, maybe even to grasp her and try to pull her up. But instead she simply spoke, her voice softer than Santana had expected.

"Santana…you know that just going to sleep doesn't make any of this any less real."

"No," Santana blurted before she could quite stop herself, fiercely shaking her head and curling her knees more tightly against her chest. "But it makes reality go away for a few hours. Seems like a damn good deal to me."

She expected Quinn to argue with her, to tell her that she needed to get out of bed and start facing facts about the world as it was now. She thought that the other girl would tell her that they had to make plans, that they had to develop a course of action and carry it out. She thought Quinn would take her by the shoulders and haul her up, that another fight would break out between them that she didn't know she had the energy to take part in.

But instead, Quinn slowly pulled the covers back and slid in bed behind Santana. Instead, she lay beside her on her back, just close enough so that her shoulder touched Santana's, and although she didn't speak to her or touch her any more intimately than this, just the fact that she was so close, that Santana could hear her breathing beside her, was enough that in spite of her initial thoughts against it, she found herself drifting off into a light doze after all, her spine in physical contact with Quinn's side.


	11. Chapter 11

She could smell it before she could really see it. It was overwhelming, nauseating in its stench. It smelled like rotted meat, left out in the open without someone disposing of it, and Santana gagged against the pile rising up her throat. She felt it next, damp and sticky, matting her hair to her neck and the sides of her face, dripping in thick droplets down her back. It was drying to her skin, sticking beneath her nails, and Santana couldn't seem to get it off of her. If she shook her hands, it barely dripped off; if she wiped it against her clothes, she could only feel more, coming off of the fabric of her shirt and jeans to further stain her hands.

It was everywhere. No matter what way she turned her head or even her entire body, there it was, splashed up along the walls, seeming to ooze up from beneath their surface as though staining from the inside of the walls out. It was soaked into the floors, making her feet slip and slide as she tried to walk, and as Santana hurried her steps, cries of disgust and fear choking her throat, all she could seem to think was how had this happened, where was all this blood coming from?

For all this blood, it couldn't be just one creature, just one person who had died…there was so much of it, such a sheer vast quantity, that it must have been dozens, maybe hundreds. But why couldn't she remember what had happened…how could she not know how her own hands had been stained with so much blood?

She tried to call out, to ask for acknowledgement from someone, anyone who might be present with her, anyone else who might help, who had also survived. But she couldn't seem to force out the words, or even form them all the way in her mind. They slipped and dripped away from her like the blood from her body, blood that Santana knew was not her own.

She didn't recognize her at first when she approached. The blood had stained her blonde hair a dark red, her features were nearly obscured by its heavy strands, and she walked with a stooped, shuffling gait that was not characteristic of her at all. But as Quinn drew closer, Santana knew nevertheless that it was her. Her words returned in a whooshing breath, and she opened her mouth, intending to call out to her, to hold out her arms and draw her close, to check whether she was okay and rejoice that she lived at all.

But the closer Quinn came to her, the more Santana's heart began to race, for there was something terrible wrong with her slumped shoulders, with her dragging steps and her slackened jaw. There was something terribly wrong with the emptiness in her eyes, with the way she looked straight at her yet didn't seem to see her at all…

88

"Santana…Santana…Santana!"

Quinn was shaking her. Santana could feel her hands on her shoulders, gripping her firmly, and she twisted fiercely, trying to duck out from her grasp. Any minute, she was sure, the other girl would get a tight enough grasp on her that she could lean forward and pierce her skin with her teeth without effort. Any minute, and Quinn would make her just like her, ending Santana's life. She fought her, trying to get her hands up enough to push at her hands or scratch her nails down her face, but her arms were being held down, and she couldn't seem to get them loose. Quinn had her too tightly…Quinn wasn't going to let her go.

"Santana, calm down! Santana…"

It took several more instances of hearing her name before it occurred to Santana…how was Quinn talking? She had yet to hear a zombie speak, and she had always assumed that like in the movies, they weren't capable of it. Yet here was Quinn's voice, sounding no different than normal, except maybe a little louder and more urgent than it usually might. Quinn was speaking, and didn't that mean…couldn't that mean that maybe she wasn't really a zombie after all?

"Santana," Quinn repeated, and for the first time Santana opened her eyes, letting them slowly take in and try to make sense of what exactly it was that was happening to her.

The only sight in her line of vision initially was Quinn's hazel eyes, bright with concern and what looked like a glimmer of barely concealed fear. Santana searched, eyes darting up and down Quinn's form, but she couldn't even see a speck of blood on her, let alone the amount that had covered her in her last envisioning of her. She sucked in a breath, eyes moving past Quinn to seek out the appearance of the rest of the room, but the bright lighting of Quinn's bedroom revealed nothing out of the ordinary. No blood, nothing but the almost overly neat interior of a room marred only by Santana's clothing, discarded on the floor.

"You were making noise in your sleep," Quinn supplied for her, giving her an explanation for Santana's continued confusion as she slowly sat up, her head still turning side to side. "You were starting to kick…I thought I'd better wake you up. It was just a dream, Santana. You know that now, right?"

"Right," Santana nodded, but her voice was shaky even to her own ears. "I know."

She cleared her throat, taking in another slow breath, noticing that Quinn didn't back off to give her space. She was still leaned close to her, her hands on her shoulders, even as she loosened her grip.

"Are you okay?"

Santana looked back at her, noticing then for the first time the strain in Quinn's features, deep, darkened circles beneath her eyes. Although Quinn had showered the day before, her hair was limp today, and Santana wondered if she had slept at all, or just lay beside her, watching her sleep instead. Santana was still chilled, more from the remnants of her dream than from the temperature, goosebumps riddling her skin even as sweat gathered at her neck and hairline, and she felt emotional, having to focus on her breaths to keep tears from spilling out her eyes against her will. Still, seeing the weariness in Quinn's face, she nodded, swallowing.

"Yeah. Okay."

For a few more moments the two of them remained in their positioning somewhat awkwardly, Quinn holding onto Santana's arms leaned over her, Santana half sitting up against her pillow. Then Quinn released her, moving to simply sit beside her again, and quiet resumed, broken only by the sound of their not quite even breaths. Santana could sense Quinn glancing at her frequently, could just see it out the corner of her eye, and after a few moments' debate, she shifted closer to her, letting her arm and shoulder come in contact with Quinn's, letting her head fall against hers, almost in perfect alignment with the curve of Quinn's neck and shoulder. She wasn't sure if she was making the gesture for her own comfort or for Quinn's reassurance, but maybe it didn't matter. After another few seconds, Quinn's arm slid behind Santana's back, wrapping around her waist to pull her slightly closer against her side.

"It's day time," Quinn said finally. Santana was very much aware of her hand, resting against her hip, her thumb lightly rubbing over its somewhat prominent bone. What she wasn't sure about was if Quinn herself was aware of what she was doing, or if it was entirely unconscious. "I think it's around 3 pm. Do you want to get up?"

Santana considered this, weighing out the option. She knew that if she didn't get up, she would be unable to sleep at night, and that would be a fairly scary thing, to be awake at night and all too alert to all the possible dangers outside their door. But on the other hand, she was still so tired, her body physically aching with weariness that was as much physical as mental and emotional. And it was strangely comfortable to lie against Quinn in this manner, letting herself rest in this way.

"No," she said simply, not bothering to provide an explanation, and Quinn accepted this, not asking for one.

"Okay."

Neither spoke for a minute or two. Santana could feel Quinn's breathing, slightly stirring her hair, and her thumb continued its slow, gentle caress over her hip. It was making her feel sleepy again, her body growing heavier and more relaxed at her side, so that when Quinn broke the quiet, she was startled by the sound of her voice.

"Do you want to talk?"

The hesitation in Quinn's voice seemed to indicate that Quinn herself didn't want to, but rather seemed to feel that if Santana did, then she should at least offer to listen. Santana turned her head slightly, without entirely removing it from her shoulder, to look up almost cross eyed at her, her brow furrowing.

"About what?"

"I don't know, Santana, that's why I was asking you," Quinn rolled her eyes. Her thumb stopped its movement across Santana's hip, but her hand stayed there, lightly cupping its curve. "About something. Anything. The dream, what we're going to do today, anything that's happened so far…just…anything."

Again, it sounded to Santana like Quinn didn't want to herself, and she could feel the new slight tension in her body against her own as she asked. Santana shook her head before laying it back down against Quinn's shoulder.

"Definitely not, across the board. Talk is overrated."

"I don't know, you've never exactly been the strong and silent type," Quinn commented, her voice wry. "Definitely not quiet, at any rate."

"I know a little blondie who makes a lot of noise herself," Santana riffed back automatically, nudging Quinn in the ribs with an elbow. "At least in the bedroom…oh, wait, where are we now, again?"

"Like you can talk," Quinn needled back, giving her a returning playful jab that was still somewhat harder than Santana's had been. "You can, for sure- mostly pornographically."

Santana laughed, her face relaxing into a genuine smile- the first that she could remember in the past two days. For a few seconds she truly forgot everything that had happened, everything that was frightening and uncertain about what could happen in the future, and just enjoyed herself in a moment with her best friend.

When it hit her, a few moments later, that Quinn might be the only person in the world she could ever have these moments with anymore, that for certain, she would never again have them with her mother, her father, or Brittany, Santana's mood plummeted, and she started to fidget, trying to thrust her sadness away from herself and refocus her thoughts on something, anything else. She didn't move away from Quinn, wanting the physical contact in spite of the fact that it was not with the person she would have chosen first, but after a brief period of her restless movements, Quinn interrupted.

"San, you're crushing my arm here. Move yourself or move me, but move something."

Letting out a breath, Santana leaned forward, allowing Quinn to retrieve her arm from behind her. She didn't try to lean back against her, but as she sat up, back straight, and picked at the sheet covering her legs, she could again feel Quinn's eyes on her. The other girl sighed, then took hold of her shoulders, pressing down on them gently. As Santana turned her head, surprised and a little confused, Quinn kept pressing at them, trying to get her to lie down.

"Here. On your side, San."

Santana turned, as Quinn had directed her, giving an exaggerated sigh as she did. She figured that Quinn was just wanting to find a way to pull free from her, give her arm a break, but to her surprise, Quinn too lay on her side, her body pressed close against Santana's back as one arm loosely draped over her waist, her chin resting on her shoulder. Essentially they were spooning, something that was nearly unprecedented between them. Nearly, but not fully…as Santana lay back, trying to relax against Quinn, she remembered vaguely waking up in this position, months ago in the hotel on Valentine's Day, and how they had slept until they almost missed the check out time, pulling away when they finally dragged themselves out of bed and constantly suppressing sheepish grins and nervous giggles any time their eyes accidentally met.

But this felt different; for one thing, Santana was vividly aware of every part of Quinn's body against hers, rather than barely awake after orgasms and way too much alcohol. She could feel Quinn's warm skin through the thin fabric of her t-shirt, her breath softly stirring her hair, and she knew how hard Quinn was trying to be there for her, how concerned she must be to offer this to her. Maybe in Quinn's way she was trying to make up to her, and so Santana sighed out again, slowly letting her hand move to cover Quinn's, on her stomach.

"How can we do this, Quinn?"

"Looks like we're managing it okay, as long as you don't start kicking or snoring too loudly," Quinn said lightly, giving her hip bone a light tap with her thumb that Santana guessed was supposed to be playful.

She knew that Quinn knew this wasn't what she was talking about. Rolling her eyes, Santana flicked the back of her hand lightly.

"You know what I mean, Quinn. All of this…everything," Santana flicked her wrist somewhat limply, giving a tired gesture to encompass her meaning. "How do we just keep doing this, every day, every hour, when we really don't know what the hell we're doing at all?"

Quinn paused before giving her response, seeming to be trying to give her answer to her the proper consideration it deserved. Santana felt the arm around her waist squeeze lightly before she responded.

"I don't know, Santana. We just do. We do what we have to, the best that we can, for as long as we can. That's all we can do. We don't really have any other choice."

It wasn't an answer at all, not really. But Santana would have to accept that as the best Quinn could give, because she was right, really. What had she expected her to say?

She couldn't have gone back to sleep, then, even though she still didn't want to get up and start her day. She wanted to remain in bed with another human being's arm around her, feeling a physical reminder that there was someone with her in the world still, that someone cared enough to try to provide even the mildest sort of comfort she could. Still, even the presence of Quinn's arm around her couldn't chase off all the thoughts still drifting through her brain, and Santana swallowed, closing her eyes against the hazy images in her mind even as she spoke of them aloud.

"Quinn…that man. The way he looked when I…shit."

"Stop it, Santana," Quinn cut her off before she could attempt to continue, and Santana could feel her shaking her head against her shoulder. "Don't. He wasn't a man, not anymore. You didn't do that to him, what he became. All you did was make sure he didn't stay that way, and if he was any kind of decent guy at all before, that was what he would want anyway. Just stop thinking about it."

"How do you just stop thinking about something? You don't pick your thoughts," Santana retorted, shifting her legs slightly and feeling them press back more firmly against Quinn's. She felt Quinn bump her own against hers gently, nudging her as she responded.

"You can. You just do it, Santana. Just pick something to focus on and don't let anything else get through. Count sheep if you have to. Sing the most annoying song you can think of…I can help you with that one if you need," she threatened with a hint of a smile in her voice, as Santana reached back to nudge her a little harder.

"Yeah, no thanks, smartass. Uh…songs, songs….how about songs that are people's names?"

"Do we have to sing them all, or just think of examples?" Quinn questioned, adjusting her hand slightly so it lay against Santana's hip.

Santana shrugged. "I guess just think of them, I don't know all the words….um…Rhiannon. Carmen. Maria."

"Roxanne," Quinn added, her voice softer with thought. "Jude. Eleanor Rigby. Sadie. Lucy. Rita. Jojo…"

"Okay, off the Beatles kick, hippie wannabe," Santana smiled, giving her hand another flick. "Um…Athena. Mary Jane. Katie. Angela. Angie. Irene. Madeline…"

"I don't know half those songs, I think you're just making up names off the top of your head," Quinn accused, and Santana could hear her smirk even without seeing her face. "Where exactly is there a song about a Madeline?"

Santana didn't want to admit that this particular song just happened to be by the old 90s band Hanson, which would indicate that she knew more than "MMMBop…" that actually, she had their entire first CD memorized. Flushing slightly, she ignored her, continuing to list songs as her own voice started to get softer, sleepier in tone as her thoughts stayed focused in this direction.

"Jessie. Norma Jean. Daniel. Leevon…."

"Now who's on a hippie times kick, Elton John lover?" Quinn teased, but her voice was soft, even gentle, as she added a few of her own. "Caroline. Gloria. Um, Rhonda…Mary, if you count all the religious songs…"

"Gertrude…John…Haley," Santana added, her eyelids already growing heavier as she spoke through a drawn out yawn. "Paulina…Maggie Mae…Earl…Michelle….Layla…Beth…"

She didn't realize her mistake until she heard Quinn draw in a sharp breath behind her, felt her heartbeat suddenly hard and fast against her back, and felt her arm tighten around her waist, almost to the point of pain. Quinn said nothing, but Santana could hear her breathing louder and more unevenly than before, could feel the sudden tension of all her muscles against her body, and suddenly fully awake, she tried to turn over to see her face.

"Quinn? Are you okay?"

Quinn's voice took some time in coming, and when it did it was rough, almost angry. "Go to sleep, Santana."

"She's probably okay, Quinn," Santana tried, twining her fingers through Quinn's and squeezing. She noticed that Quinn didn't squeeze back, that her skin was cold and stiff against hers. "Shelby would do anything to protect her, you know that. I'm sure she's holed up like we are, even-"

"I said go to sleep, Santana," Quinn repeated, even harsher in tone, as she pulled her fingers from Santana's and then pulled away from her entirely, turning over to rest on her other side so her back was turned to her.

Several minutes passed with only the still erratic noise of Quinn's breathing showing any signs to Santana that she was still awake at all. Wide awake now, Santana lay there, wanting to speak to her, wanting still to apologize and reassure her, as Quinn had tried to reassure her, but having no idea of what she could say to genuinely help. One thought, only slightly related, repeatedly came to her mind, and she sighed, addressing her tentatively.

"Quinn…you didn't want to do it, did you? Brittany…you didn't want to have to-"

"Of course I didn't!" Quinn snapped, raising her voice to almost a shout, even as she kept her back to Santana, curling herself up into a tight ball, arms wrapped around her legs. "Don't be an idiot, Santana, how the hell did you not already know that? Now shut up and let me sleep!"

At almost any other time, Santana's anger would have been piqued at her sharp response to her. But now she just felt sad, sad and somewhat ashamed of herself for her own responses…both now, and much earlier. She went quiet, as Quinn had asked, but after several minutes of hearing the other girl's breathing continue to rasp in and out at a pace much too fast to possibly be able to fall asleep, she rolled over onto her opposite side, scooted closer to Quinn, and slowly looped an arm over her curled frame, working it around her shoulders and upper chest. When Quinn didn't pull away, she stayed, closing her eyes. Just before she drifted back to sleep, she was distantly aware of the dampness of what must have been Quinn's silent tears, dripping down onto the back of her wrist.


	12. Chapter 12

It seemed to Santana that after that afternoon, something between her and Quinn had changed. She didn't know if it was the mention of Beth, or just reality hitting her all at once, but Quinn's steely logic and seeking of solutions, of tasks to keep them busy and moving ahead with their needed doings, seemed to have come to a stop. Instead, when they finally got out of bed somewhere close to dinner time, it was Santana who sat her down and forced both herself and Quinn to eat, and it was Santana whose mind began to click ahead, thinking of what they should be doing and trying to make life easier. It was she who was instructing Quinn now, and Quinn who almost silently followed her lead.

Santana had dragged Quinn after her to check the possible entrances into the house, and once she was somewhat satisfied they were secure, she started to gather up all possible objects to use as weapons potentially, everything from knives and ropes to baseball bats, golf clubs, and broken table legs. It was too bad that Quinn's father, before he left, had never taken up hunting, because in Santana's opinion, having guns would have made things much easier on them. Although Santana had once spotted a zombie out the window, wandering down the road, no others approached the house, and so she wasn't required to kill one again.

"We should keep the lights off as much as possible, in all the rooms but the one we are in," she told Quinn somewhat nervously as they had returned to Quinn's room, laying golf clubs at their feet.

Quinn hadn't responded. She hadn't responded to much of anything, since Santana had sat up a few hours ago and made her sit up and join her in her business. So far she had eaten when Santana set food in front of her, helped her when Santana told her that she needed it, and stood by as Santana cursed the still fuzzy TV screen and called every number she could think to with no avail, and expressed little opinion or interest in any of it at all. Santana paced around the bed as Quinn stood in the doorway, not actually entering the room, and continued to talk to Quinn aloud.

"I think you're right and they're probably attracted to noise and light. Damn I wish the internet was working…you don't' have any old zombie movies, do you? You never did like horror much, that sucks though because I seriously cant' think of anything else that might help us out. None of your girly chick flick or your foreign pretentious drama shit is going to help us out now. You don't even have that Warm Bodies movie, do you? Wait, what about when you dated Sam, surely he told you all kinds of shit about zombie theories. Do you remember any of it? All he talked to me about was Avatar and Star Wars."

Santana threw an expectant glance back at Quinn, but the blonde didn't reply. She didn't even shrug in response to her, and it was starting to piss Santana off. This wasn't the first time today she had simply refused to give a response, and she turned fully towards her, stopping her pacing as she crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow, huffing aloud.

"Okay, I knows you got a tongue that works because it was giving orders and pithy statements like usual all yesterday. So why don't you start using it and actually answer when I ask you something, because this is freakin' important, Q."

"I hardly think remembering what Sam may or may not have told me about hypothetical movie version of zombies two years ago is the most pressing thing for us to discuss right now," Quinn said flatly. "And besides, I don't feel like talking to you, Santana. I have nothing to say."

"Okay, first off, if the hypothetical movie version of zombies that Sam discussed two years ago tells us what to do about the completely relevant and existing zombies out there right this second, then it's very fucking PRESSING to discuss," Santana started off, hands moving from her chest to place on both hips as she stared Quinn down. "And whether or not you have anything to say, I've got plenty, so tough on you."

"Yeah, and I'm not listening to it," Quinn dismissed her, not even glancing at her as she spoke. She turned her back, her final words not even tossed over her shoulder towards Santana as she began to walk with deliberate steps down the hallway. "So you'll be wasting your breath."

This was not acceptable to Santana, not acceptable at all. For Quinn to blow her off like this, when she hadn't done anything wrong, was bad enough, but then for her to leave the room, leave Santana alone, knowing how much Santana hated that, knowing that she wouldn't even take a shower or use the bathroom without Quinn in her sight? For her to turn her back on her and walk away like Santana deserved it, like she was deliberately trying to upset and scare her? No. No way was she getting away with that, and as Santana's anger rose, she stalked after Quinn hurriedly, following her down the hall just in time to see Quinn disappear into her mother's bathroom and shut the door behind her.

Santana quickened her pace and turned the knob as she reached the door, all the more infuriated when she discovered that Quinn had locked the door. Rattling it aggressively, she pounded on the door with her other fist, shouting out to her.

"Lucy Quinn Fabray, you better have one nasty case of diarrhea to make up for the shit coming out your mouth and the fact that you're locking me out of here! Open up, what the hell is wrong with you?!"

Quinn ignored her entirely. She didn't respond with any cold, biting words or commands for Santana to leave her alone; she didn't say anything at all, and the door did not open. No matter how hard Santana pounded or how loudly and aggressively she demanded that she let her in, she didn't reply at all.

At first this enraged Santana. How dare she pretend she couldn't hear her, how dare she act like such a bitch to her when she knew perfectly well how much she hated not to be able to see her, how vulnerable and exposed she felt to standing alone in the open hall? She started to punctuate her shouting with kicks to the door as well, not caring if she bruised her toes or brought it off its hinges, as long as she got in. But then her anger became overpassed by growing anxiety, because why WAS Quinn acting like this? What if she was changing now? What if she wasn't talking because she could no longer speak? What if the last part of Quinn that was rational had locked herself in the bathroom to keep Santana safe from her?

Santana had to know. She had to get that door open, she had to know, and as she stumbled back, hurrying to the kitchen to retrieve a butter knife to pry the lock open with, she could barely keep herself breathing at anything like a normal rate. She didn't know how it could be possible, but what if it was, what if Quinn was no longer Quinn?

As she popped the door's lock and thrust it open, already half holding her breath against what she might find inside, Santana was shocked by what vision greeted her- but not because Quinn was a zombie, becoming a zombie, or in any way less human than she had been two minutes before. But although she was no less human, it was pretty clear that she was much less sober, or at least well on her way.

Quinn was slumped in front of the opened shelf beneath the kitchen sink, clutching a bottle of vodka in one loose hand. Her head was bent forward, her shoulders rolled in, and already a good portion of the bottle was gone. As Santana gawked at her, temporarily too startled to even think of how to respond, Quinn took another long swallow from the bottle's neck before letting her arm fall back down limply. Her eyes dragged up Santana's standing frame to meet her face, and Santana saw how they were simultaneously dazed yet bright with feeling she could not mistake for anything but pain. Looking at her, Quinn let out a brief giggle, but there was nothing funny about her expression or her tone when she spoke to her.

"I knew Mom had a stash hidden in here…sometimes, she would disappear into the bathroom and she'd be gone for like, twenty minutes, then come out smiling and talking with a lisp and think I didn't know what was going on." Quinn shrugged, taking another swallow off the bottle's neck and wiping off her mouth with the back of her hand. She giggled again before continuing. "She couldn't deal with me, after my father left us. She never could deal with me, not really…just like I couldn't deal with keeping Beth."

Her giggling came to an abrupt halt, almost as though it had been choked off, and Quinn's lips started to tremble visibly. She didn't even try to control it. Instead, she let her head drop forward, tears overflowing, and her chest began to heave with hiccupping sobs as her hand loosened further around the bottle, threatening to drop and spill it. Looking at her, Santana's heart wrenched. She didn't know whether to be irritated or disgusted or guilty, but in the end, simple sorrow for Quinn won out. It was about time for her to finally really break.

"Oh, Q," she said softly, taking a step forward, and when Quinn just sobbed, not responding to her, she knelt beside her, hesitantly reaching out a hand to rest on her shoulder. "Quinn…"

"She's dead, Santana," Quinn choked out, her breath coming in uneven gasps as she bent forward still further, nearly touching her forehead to her knees. Santana watched her warily, ready to twist out of the way if she started to vomit, but Quinn showed no signs of impending sickness, at least at the moment. "I know she's dead. I know it. She's only three…she's probably one of the first…the first ones to…"

"Quinn, you don't know that," Santana tried, her grip on Quinn's shoulder tightening as she scooted a little closer, trying to look her in the face. "You don't know-"

"Probably everyone is. Everyone in the whole damn town. We're the only people left…only two," Quinn continued, sniffling loudly as she took a gulping breath, lifting her face slightly. Another strained giggle escaped her as she added, "It's ironic…two biggest bitches in town, probably matters the least if we live or not…and we're the last ones left. We're the ones who survive and we don't even deserve it."

There was a lot that Santana could have said to that, and she almost did; the words were certainly on the tip of her tongue. But when Quinn's sobs grew louder and more intense right after she had spoken, Santana bit them back, focusing instead on what seemed the most important thing- calming Quinn back down. Also, making sure she didn't get so upset she choked on her own spit and ended up puking vodka all over, which was almost more important in her mind.

She didn't know what to say to her. Everything that came to her mind was entirely inadequate, because the truth was that Quinn was right. Beth probably was dead; they had no proof of anything otherwise, one way or the other. It had crossed Santana's mind on more than one occasion that maybe, just maybe, they were the only ones left, and she had debated with herself repeatedly whether or not her life would continue to be worth living with only Quinn Fabray existing in its remainder. She couldn't think of anything to say, so she just hugged Quinn, cradling her head to her shoulder, and stroked a hand through her hair, waiting for the crying to pass.

As Quinn's arms grasped for her, squeezing back so tightly it almost hurt, Santana closed her eyes, trying to relax. It was difficult, with Quinn sniffling and shaking in her arms, but she tried, as much for her own sake as for Quinn's. It was stressful, just being there in the moment with her, trying to keep herself from feeling with too much certainty that every word Quinn said could be true. She was so busy focusing on trying not to think that when Quinn's lips pressed against her own, open, insistent, and needy with the pressure they exerted, Santana was completely thrown off guard.

She didn't kiss her back; she was so stunned in the moment that she couldn't be certain she would have known how. Instead, she blinked, then almost choked, pulling back and staring at Quinn with something between amazement and bewilderment. She couldn't think of anything then to say except Quinn's name, and that was what ended up coming out.

"Quinn…?"

Quinn too was blinking at her, appearing dazed and somewhat startled by the fact that Santana's face was no longer connected with her own. She sniffed loudly, tears still trickling down her cheeks, her lips slightly parted as she seemed to be struggling to understand, or perhaps to fully remember, her own actions. It seemed to finally click together in her mind after a few seconds as her cheeks went red, and she dropped her head forward again, giving another sniff.

"I-I'm sorry….I don't…I don't know-"

"It's…it's okay," Santana said slowly, very much aware of the lingering feeling of Quinn's lips on hers, her skin almost tingling from the contact that didn't' quite seem ended. "It's…don't worry about it."

Her eyes fell to the bottle in Quinn's hand, still about half full, and almost on instinct she reached for it, taking a swallow, in an effort to rid herself of the feeling of the other woman's lips on her own. Swallowing with a slight grimace, she caught Quinn, still blinking at her, and shrugged.

"I don't know…maybe you had the right idea in the first place, Quinn. What the fuck, it's not like we have any better way to deal for the next few hours."

She tipped the bottle back again, her swallow longer that time, and after she'd let the sensation settle in her nearly empty stomach, she held the bottle out to Quinn, silently offering it again. When Quinn took it, her fingers brushing hers, and gave her a tiny, watery smile, she didn't care in that moment how logical of a plan this was, or how much they might pay for it later. Right then, just for that smile, it felt right.


End file.
